V 


ITALIAN    HOURS 


THE     HARBOUR,     GKNOA. 


ITALIAN  HOURS 

BY  HENRY  JAMES 

WITH  ILLUSTRATIONS  IN  COLOR 
BY  JOSEPH  PENNELL 


BOSTON  AND  NEW  YORK 

HOUGHTON  MIFFLIN  COMPANY 

MDGGGGIX 


COPYRIGHT,   1909,  BY  HENRY  JAMES 
ALL  RIGHTS  RESERVED 

PUBLISHED    NOVEMBER    1 909 
SECOND   IMPRESSION 


PREFACE 

|HE  chapters  of  which  this  volume  is  com 
posed  have  with  few  exceptions  already 
been  collected,  and  were  then  associated 
with  others  commemorative  of  other 
impressions  of  (no  very  extensive)  ex 
cursions  and  wanderings.  The  notes  on 
various  visits  to  Italy  are  here  for  the 
first  time  exclusively  placed  together, 
and  as  they  largely  refer  to  quite  other  days  than  these  —  the 
date  affixed  to  each  paper  sufficiently  indicating  this  —  I  have 
introduced  a  few  passages  that  speak  for  a  later  and  in  some  cases 
a  frequently  repeated  vision  of  the  places  and  scenes  in  question. 
I  have  not  hesitated  to  amend  my  text,  expressively,  wherever 
it  seemed  urgently  to  ask  for  this,  though  I  have  not  pretended 
to  add  the  element  of  information  or  the  weight  of  curious  and 
critical  insistence  to  a  brief  record  of  light  inquiries  and  conclu 
sions.  The  fond  appeal  of  the  observer  concerned  is  all  to  aspects 
and  appearances  —  above  all  to  the  interesting  face  of  things  as 
it  mainly  used  to  be. 

H.  J. 


UNiHRSRAfl. 
UMMH 


CONTENTS 

VENICE i 

THE  GRAND  CANAL 41 

VENICE:  AN  EARLY  IMPRESSION 71 

TWO  OLD  HOUSES  AND  THREE  YOUNG  WOMEN  .        .  87 

CASA  ALVISI 107 

FROM  CHAMBERY  TO  MILAN 117 

THE  OLD  SAINT-GOTHARD 133 

ITALY  REVISITED 151 

A  ROMAN  HOLIDAY 189 

ROMAN  RIDES 215 

ROMAN  NEIGHBOURHOODS 237 

THE  AFTER-SEASON  IN  ROME 263 

FROM  A  ROMAN  NOTE-BOOK 275 

A  FEW  OTHER  ROMAN  NEIGHBOURHOODS       .        .        .301 

A  CHAIN  OF  CITIES -  3 '9 

SIENA  EARLY  AND  LATE 343 

THE  AUTUMN  IN  FLORENCE 373 

[   vii   ] 


CONTENTS 

FLORENTINE  NOTES 389 

TUSCAN  CITIES 429 

OTHER  TUSCAN  CITIES 443 

RAVENNA 465 

THE  SAINT'S  AFTERNOON  AND  OTHERS    ....  479 


ILLUSTRATIONS 

THE  HARBOUR,  GENOA  (page  162)    ....       Frontispiece 

FLAGS  AT  ST.  MARK'S,  VENICE 12 

A  NARROW  CANAL,  VENICE 18 

PALAZZO  MOCENIGO,  VENICE 64 

THE  AMPHITHEATRE,  VERONA 84 

CASA  ALVISI,  VENICE no 

THE  SIMPLON  GATE,  MILAN 126 

THE  CLOCK  TOWER,  BERNE .136 

UNDER  THE  ARCADES,  TURIN 156 

ROMAN  GATEWAY,  RIMINI 172 

SANTA  MARIA  NOVELLA,  FLORENCE           ....  178 

THE  FACADE  OF  ST.  JOHN  LATERAN,  ROME  ...  204 

THE  COLONNADE  OF  ST.   PETER'S,  ROME  ....  210 

CASTEL  GANDOLFO 254 

ENTRANCE  TO  THE  VATICAN,  ROME           ....  292 

VILLA  D'ESTE,  TIVOLI 306 

SUBIACO 310 

t  «  ] 


ILLUSTRATIONS 

ASSISI 322 

PERUGIA 330 

ETRUSCAN  GATEWAY,  PERUGIA      ......  334 

A  STREET,  CORTONA 338 

THE  RED  PALACE,  SIENA 354 

SAN  DOMENICO,  SIENA 358 

ON  THE  ARNO,  FLORENCE 380 

THE  GREAT  EAVES,  FLORENCE 412 

BOBOLI  GARDENS,  FLORENCE 424 

THE  HOSPITAL,  PISTOIA 442 

THE  LOGGIA,  LUCCA  450 

TOWERS  OF  SAN  GIMIGNANO 462 

SAN  APOLLINARE  NUOVO,  RAVENNA 472 

RAVENNA  PINETA 4?8 

TERRACINA 502 


VENICE 


ITALIAN  HOURS 


VENICE 

JT  is  a  great  pleasure  to  write  the  word; 
but  I  am  not  sure  there  is  not  a  certain 
impudence  in  pretending  to  add  any 
thing  to  it.  Venice  has  been  painted  and 
described  many  thousands  of  times,  and 
of  all  the  cities  of  the  world  is  the  easiest 
to  visit  without  going  there.  Open  the 
first  book  and  you  will  find  a  rhapsody 
about  it;  step  into  the  first  picture-dealer's  and  you  will  find 
three  or  four  high-coloured  "views"  of  it.  There  is  notori 
ously  nothing  more  to  be  said  on  the  subject.  Every  one  has  been 
there,  and  every  one  has  brought  back  a  collection  of  photographs. 
There  is  as  little  mystery  about  the  Grand  Canal  as  about  our 
local  thoroughfare,  and  the  name  of  St.  Mark  is  as  familiar  as  the 
postman's  ring.  It  is  not  forbidden,  however,  to  speak  of  familiar 
things,  and  I  hold  that  for  the  true  Venice-lover  Venice  is  always 
in  order.  There  is  nothing  new  to  be  said  about  her  certainly,  but 
the  old  is  better  than  any  novelty.  It  would  be  a  sad  day  indeed 
when  there  should  be  something  new  to  say.  I  write  these  lines 
with  the  full  consciousness  of  having  no  information  whatever  to 

[3] 


ITALIAN    HOURS 

offer.  I  do  not  pretend  to  enlighten  the  reader ;  I  pretend  only 
to  give  a  fillip  to  his  memory ;  and  I  hold  any  writer  sufficiently 
justified  who  is  himself  in  love  with  his  theme. 


MR.  RUSKIN  has  given  it  up,  that  is  very  true ;  but  only  after  ex 
tracting  half  a  lifetime  of  pleasure  and  an  immeasurable  quantity 
of  fame  from  it.  We  all  may  do  the  same,  after  it  has  served  our 
turn,  which  it  probably  will  not  cease  to  do  for  many  a  year  to 
come.  Meantime  it  is  Mr.  Ruskin  who  beyond  any  one  helps  us 
to  enjoy.  He  has  indeed  lately  produced  several  aids  to  depression 
in  the  shape  of  certain  little  humorous  —  ill-humorous  —  pam 
phlets  (the  series  of  St.  Mark's  Rest)  which  embody  his  latest  re 
flections  on  the  subject  of  our  city  and  describe  the  latest  atrocities 
perpetrated  there.  These  latter  are  numerous  and  deeply  to  be 
deplored ;  but  to  admit  that  they  have  spoiled  Venice  would  be  to 
admit  that  Venice  may  be  spoiled  —  an  admission  pregnant,  as  it 
seems  to  us,  with  disloyalty.  Fortunately  one  reacts  against  the 
Ruskinian  contagion,  and  one  hour  of  the  lagoon  is  worth  a  hun 
dred  pages  of  demoralised  prose.  This  queer  late-coming  prose 
of  Mr.  Ruskin  (including  the  revised  and  condensed  issue  of  the 
Stones  of  Venice,  only  one  little  volume  of  which  has  been  pub 
lished,  or  perhaps  ever  will  be)  is  all  to  be  read,  though  much  of 
it  appears  addressed  to  children  of  tender  age.  It  is  pitched  in  the 
nursery-key,  and  might  be  supposed  to  emanate  from  an  angry 

[4] 


VENICE 

governess.  It  is,  however,  all  suggestive,  and  much  of  it  is  delight 
fully  just.  There  is  an  inconceivable  want  of  form  in  it,  though 
the  author  has  spent  his  life  in  laying  down  the  principles  of  form 
and  scolding  people  for  departing  from  them ;  but  it  throbs  and 
flashes  with  the  love  of  his  subject  —  a  love  disconcerted  and 
abjured,  but  which  has  still  much  of  the  force  of  inspiration. 
Among  the  many  strange  things  that  have  befallen  Venice,  she 
has  had  the  good  fortune  to  become  the  object  of  a  passion  to  a 
man  of  splendid  genius,  who  has  made  her  his  own  and  in  doing 
so  has  made  her  the  world's.  There  is  no  better  reading  at  Venice 
therefore,  as  I  say,  than  Ruskin,  for  every  true  Venice-lover  can 
separate  the  wheat  from  the  chaff.  The  narrow  theological  spirit, 
the  moralism  a  tout  propos,  the  queer  provincialities  and  pruderies, 
are  mere  wild  weeds  in  a  mountain  of  flowers.  One  may  doubtless 
be  very  happy  in  Venice  without  reading  at  all  —  without  criti 
cising  or  analysing  or  thinking  a  strenuous  thought.  It  is  a  city 
in  which,  I  suspect,  there  is  very  little  strenuous  thinking,  and  yet 
it  is  a  city  in  which  there  must  be  almost  as  much  happiness 
as  misery.  The  misery  of  Venice  stands  there  for  all  the  world 
to  see ;  it  is  part  of  the  spectacle  —  a  thoroughgoing  devotee  of 
local  colour  might  consistently  say  it  is  part  of  the  pleasure.  The 
Venetian  people  have  little  to  call  their  own  —  little  more  than  the 
bare  privilege  of  leading  their  lives  in  the  most  beautiful  of  towns. 
Their  habitations  are  decayed;  their  taxes  heavy;  their  pockets 
light ;  their  opportunities  few.  One  receives  an  impression,  how 
ever,  that  life  presents  itself  to  them  with  attractions  not  accounted 
for  in  this  meagre  train  of  .advantages,  and  that  they  are  on  better 

[5] 


ITALIAN    HOURS 

terms  with  it  than  many  people  who  have  made  a  better  bargain. 
They  lie  in  the  sunshine ;  they  dabble  in  the  sea ;  they  wear  bright 
rags ;  they  fall  into  attitudes  and  harmonies ;  they  assist  at  an  eter 
nal  conversazione.  It  is  not  easy  to  say  that  one  would  have  them 
other  than  they  are,  and  it  certainly  would  make  an  immense 
difference  should  they  be  better  fed.  The  number  of  persons  in 
Venice  who  evidently  never  have  enough  to  eat  is  painfully  large ; 
but  it  would  be  more  painful  if  we  did  not  equally  perceive  that 
the  rich  Venetian  temperament  may  bloom  upon  a  dog's  allow 
ance.  Nature  has  been  kind  to  it,  and  sunshine  and  leisure  and 
conversation  and  beautiful  views  form  the  greater  part  of  its 
sustenance.  It  takes  a  great  deal  to  make  a  successful  American, 
but  to  make  a  happy  Venetian  takes  only  a  handful  of  quick  sen 
sibility.  The  Italian  people  have  at  once  the  good  and  the  evil 
fortune  to  be  conscious  of  few  wants ;  so  that  if  the  civilisation  of 
a  society  is  measured  by  the  number  of  its  needs,  as  seems  to  be 
the  common  opinion  to-day,  it  is  to  be  feared  that  the  children  of 
the  lagoon  would  make  but  a  poor  figure  in  a  set  of  comparative 
tables.  Not  their  misery,  doubtless,  but  the  way  they  elude  their 
misery,  is  what  pleases  the  sentimental  tourist,  who  is  gratified  by 
the  sight  of  a  beautiful  race  that  lives  by  the  aid  of  its  imagination. 
The  way  to  enjoy  Venice  is  to  follow  the  example  of  these  people 
and  make  the  most  of  simple  pleasures.  Almost  all  the  pleasures 
of  the  place  are  simple ;  this  may  be  maintained  even  under  the 
imputation  of  ingenious  paradox.  There  is  no  simpler  pleasure 
than  looking  at  a  fine  Titian,  unless  it  be  looking  at  a  fine  Tin- 
toret  or  strolling  into  St.  Mark's,  —  abominable  the  way  one  falls 

[6] 


VENICE 

into  the  habit,  —  and  resting  one's  light-wearied  eyes  upon  the 
windowless  gloom ;  or  than  floating  in  a  gondola  or  than  hanging 
over  a  balcony  or  than  taking  one's  coffee  at  Florian's.  It  is  of 
such  superficial  pastimes  that  a  Venetian  day  is  composed,  and 
the  pleasure  of  the  matter  is  in  the  emotions  to  which  they  minis 
ter.  These  are  fortunately  of  the  finest  —  otherwise  Venice  would 
be  insufferably  dull.  Reading  Ruskin  is  good;  reading  the  old 
records  is  perhaps  better;  but  the  best  thing  of  all  is  simply  stay 
ing  on.  The  only  way  to  care  for  Venice  as  she  deserves  it  is  to 
give  her  a  chance  to  touch  you  often  —  to  linger  and  remain  and 
return. 


II 


THE  danger  is  that  you  will  not  linger  enough  —  a  danger  of 
which  the  author  of  these  lines  had  known  something.  It  is 
possible  to  dislike  Venice,  and  to  entertain  the  sentiment  in  a 
responsible  and  intelligent  manner.  There  are  travellers  who 
think  the  place  odious,  and  those  who  are  not  of  this  opinion 
often  find  themselves  wishing  that  the  others  were  only  more 
numerous.  The  sentimental  tourist's  sole  quarrel  with  his  Ven 
ice  is  that  he  has  too  many  competitors  there.  He  likes  to  be 
alone;  to  be  original;  to  have  (to  himself,  at  least)  the  air  of 
making  discoveries.  The  Venice  of  to-day  is  a  vast  museum 
where  the  little  wicket  that  admits  you  is  perpetually  turning 
and  creaking,  and  you  march  through  the  institution  with  a  herd 
of  fellow-gazers.  There  is  nothing  left  to  discover  or  describe, 

[7] 


ITALIAN    HOURS 

and  originality  of  attitude  is  completely  impossible.  This  is 
often  very  annoying;  you  can  only  turn  your  back  on  your  im 
pertinent  playfellow  and  curse  his  want  of  delicacy.  But  this 
is  not  the  fault  of  Venice;  it  is  the  fault  of  the  rest  of  the  world. 
The  fault  of  Venice  is  that,  though  she  is  easy  to  admire,  she  is 
not  so  easy  to  live  with  as  you  count  living  in  other  places.  After 
you  have  stayed  a  week  and  the  bloom  of  novelty  has  rubbed  off 
you  wonder  if  you  can  accommodate  yourself  to  the  peculiar 
conditions.  Your  old  habits  become  impracticable  and  you  find 
yourself  obliged  to  form  new  ones  of  an  undesirable  and  un 
profitable  character.  You  are  tired  of  your  gondola  (or  you 
think  you  are)  and  you  have  seen  all  the  principal  pictures  and 
heard  the  names  of  the  palaces  announced  a  dozen  times  by  your 
gondolier,  who  brings  them  out  almost  as  impressively  as  if 
he  were  an  English  butler  bawling  titles  into  a  drawing-room.  You 
have  walked  several  hundred  times  round  the  Piazza,  and  bought 
several  bushels  of  photographs.  You  have  visited  the  antiquity 
mongers  whose  horrible  sign-boards  dishonour  some  of  the  grand 
est  vistas  in  the  Grand  Canal ;  you  have  tried  the  opera  and  found 
it  very  bad ;  you  have  bathed  at  the  Lido  and  found  the  water  flat. 
You  have  begun  to  have  a  shipboard-feeling  —  to  regard  the  Pi 
azza  as  an  enormous  saloon  and  the  Riva  degli  Schiavoni  as  a 
promenade-deck.  You  are  obstructed  and  encaged ;  your  desire 
for  space  is  unsatisfied ;  you  miss  your  usual  exercise.  You  try  to 
take  a  walk  and  you  fail,  and  meantime,  as  I  say,  you  have  come 
to  regard  your  gondola  as  a  sort  of  magnified  baby's  cradle.  You 
have  no  desire  to  be  rocked  to  sleep,  though  you  are  sufficiently 

[8] 


VENICE 

kept  awake  by  the  irritation  produced,  as  you  gaze  across  the 
shallow  lagoon,  by  the  attitude  of  the  perpetual  gondolier,  with 
his  turned-out  toes,  his  protruded  chin,  his  absurdly  unscientific 
stroke.  The  canals  have  a  horrible  smell,  and  the  everlasting 
Piazza,  where  you  have  looked  repeatedly  at  every  article  in 
every  shop-window  and  found  them  all  rubbish,  where  the  young 
Venetians  who  sell  bead  bracelets  and  "panoramas"  are  perpetu 
ally  thrusting  their  wares  at  you,  where  the  same  tightly-buttoned 
officers  are  for  ever  sucking  the  same  black  weeds,  at  the  same 
empty  tables,  in  front  of  the  same  cafes  —  the  Piazza,  as  I  say, 
has  resolved  itself  into  a  magnificent  tread-mill.  This  is  the  state 
of  mind  of  those  shallow  inquirers  who  find  Venice  all  very  well 
for  a  week ;  and  if  in  such  a  state  of  mind  you  take  your  departure 
you  act  with  fatal  rashness.  The  loss  is  your  own,  moreover;  it  is 
not  —  with  all  deference  to  your  personal  attractions  —  that  of 
your  companions  who  remain  behind ;  for  though  there  are  some 
disagreeable  things  in  Venice  there  is  nothing  so  disagreeable  as 
the  visitors.  The  conditions  are  peculiar,  but  your  intolerance  of 
them  evaporates  before  it  has  had  time  to  become  a  prejudice. 
When  you  have  called  for  the  bill  to  go,  pay  it  and  remain,  and  you 
will  find  on  the  morrow  that  you  are  deeply  attached  to  Venice. 
It  is  by  living  there  from  day  to  day  that  you  feel  the  fulness  of  her 
charm;  that  you  invite  her  exquisite  influence  to  sink  into  your 
spirit.  The  creature  varies  like  a  nervous  woman,  whom  you  know 
only  when  you  know  all  the  aspects  of  her  beauty.  She  has  high 
spirits  or  low,  she  is  pale  or  red,  grey  or  pink,  cold  or  warm,  fresh 
or  wan,  according  to  the  weather  or  the  hour.  She  is  always  in- 

[9] 


ITALIAN    HOURS 

teresting  and  almost  always  sad ;  but  she  has  a  thousand  occasional 
graces  and  is  always  liable  to  happy  accidents.  You  become 
extraordinarily  fond  of  these  things ;  you  count  upon  them ;  they 
make  part  of  your  life.  Tenderly  fond  you  become ;  there  is  some 
thing  indefinable  in  those  depths  of  personal  acquaintance  that 
gradually  establish  themselves.  The  place  seems  to  personify 
itself,  to  become  human  and  sentient  and  conscious  of  your  affec 
tion.  You  desire  to  embrace  it,  to  caress  it,  to  possess  it ;  and  finally 
a  soft  sense  of  possession  grows  up  and  your  visit  becomes  a  per 
petual  love-affair.  It  is  very  true  that  if  you  go,  as  the  author  of 
these  lines  on  a  certain  occasion  went,  about  the  middle  of  March, 
a  certain  amount  of  disappointment  is  possible.  He  had  paid  no 
visit  for  several  years,  and  in  the  interval  the  beautiful  and  help 
less  city  had  suffered  an  increase  of  injury.  The  barbarians  are  in 
full  possession  and  you  tremble  for  what  they  may  do.  You  are 
reminded  from  the  moment  of  your  arrival  that  Venice  scarcely 
exists  any  more  as  a  city  at  all ;  that  she  exists  only  as  a  battered 
peep-show  and  bazaar.  There  was  a  horde  of  savage  Germans 
encamped  in  the  Piazza,  and  they  filled  the  Ducal  Palace  and  the 
Academy  with  their  uproar.  The  English  and  Americans  came  a 
little  later.  They  came  in  good  time,  with  a  great  many  French, 
who  were  discreet  enough  to  make  very  long  repasts  at  the  Caffe 
Quadri,  during  which  they  were  out  of  the  way.  The  months  of 
April  and  May  of  the  year  188 1  were  not,  as  a  general  thing,  a 
favourable  season  for  visiting  the  Ducal  Palace  and  the  Academy. 
The  valet-de-place  had  marked  them  for  his  own  and  held  trium 
phant  possession  of  them.  He  celebrates  his  triumphs  in  a  terrible 

[  10] 


VENICE 

brassy  voice,  which  resounds  all  over  the  place,  and  has,  whatever 
language  he  be  speaking,  the  accent  of  some  other  idiom.  During 
all  the  spring  months  in  Venice  these  gentry  abound  in  the  great 
resorts,  and  they  lead  their  helpless  captives  through  churches  and 
galleries  in  dense  irresponsible  groups.  They  infest  the  Piazza; 
they  pursue  you  along  the  Riva;  they  hang  about  the  bridges  and 
the  doors  of  the  cafes.  In  saying  just  now  that  I  was  disappointed 
at  first,  I  had  chiefly  in  mind  the  impression  that  assails  me  to-day 
in  the  whole  precinct  of  St.  Mark's.  The  condition  of  this  ancient 
sanctuary  is  surely  a  great  scandal.  The  pedlars  and  commis 
sioners  ply  their  trade  —  often  a  very  unclean  one  —  at  the  very 
door  of  the  temple ;  they  follow  you  across  the  threshold,  into  the 
sacred  dusk,  and  pull  your  sleeve,  and  hiss  into  your  ear,  scuffling 
with  each  other  for  customers.  There  is  a  great  deal  of  dishonour 
about  St.  Mark's  altogether,  and  if  Venice,  as  I  say,  has  become 
a  great  bazaar,  this  exquisite  edifice  is  now  the  biggest  booth. 


Ill 


IT  is  treated  as  a  booth  in  all  ways,  and  if  it  had  not  somehow  a 
great  spirit  of  solemnity  within  it  the  traveller  would  soon  have 
little  warrant  for  regarding  it  as  a  religious  affair.  The  restoration 
of  the  outer  walls,  which  has  lately  been  so  much  attacked  and 
defended,  is  certainly  a  great  shock.  Of  the  necessity  of  the  work 
only  an  expert  is,  I  suppose,  in  a  position  to  judge ;  but  there  is  no 
doubt  that,  if  a  necessity  it  be,  it  is  one  that  is  deeply  to  be  re- 


ITALIAN    HOURS 

gretted.  To  no  more  distressing  necessity  have  people  of  taste 
lately  had  to  resign  themselves.  Wherever  the  hand  of  the  restorer 
has  been  laid  all  semblance  of  beauty  has  vanished ;  which  is  a 
sad  fact,  considering  that  the  external  loveliness  of  St.  Mark's  has 
been  for  ages  less  impressive  only  than  that  of  the  still  compara 
tively  uninjured  interior.  I  know  not  what  is  the  measure  of  ne 
cessity  in  such  a  case,  and  it  appears  indeed  to  be  a  very  delicate 
question.  To-day,  at  any  rate,  that  admirable  harmony  of  faded 
mosaic  and  marble  which,  to  the  eye  of  the  traveller  emerging 
from  the  narrow  streets  that  lead  to  the  Piazza,  filled  all  the  fur 
ther  end  of  it  with  a  sort  of  dazzling  silver  presence  —  to-day 
this  lovely  vision  is  in  a  way  to  be  completely  reformed  and  indeed 
well-nigh  abolished.  The  old  softness  and  mellowness  of  colour  — 
the  work  of  the  quiet  centuries  and  of  the  breath  of  the  salt  sea  — 
is  giving  way  to  large  crude  patches  of  new  material  which  have 
the  effect  of  a  monstrous  malady  rather  than  of  a  restoration  to 
health.  They  look  like  blotches  of  red  and  white  paint  and  dishon 
ourable  smears  of  chalk  on  the  cheeks  of  a  noble  matron.  The 
face  toward  the  Piazzetta  is  in  especial  the  newest-looking  thing 
conceivable  —  as  new  as  a  new  pair  of  boots  or  as  the  morning's 
paper.  We  do  not  profess,  however,  to  undertake  a  scientific  quar 
rel  with  these  changes ;  we  admit  that  our  complaint  is  a  purely 
sentimental  one.  The  march  of  industry  in  united  Italy  must 
doubtless  be  looked  at  as  a  whole,  and  one  must  endeavour  to 
believe  that  it  is  through  innumerable  lapses  of  taste  that  this 
deeply  interesting  country  is  groping  her  way  to  her  place  among 
the  nations.  -For  the  present,  it  is  not  to  be  denied,  certain  odd 

[    12] 


VENICE 

phases  of  the  process  are  more  visible  than  the  result,  to  arrive 
at  which  it  seems  necessary  that,  as  she  was  of  old  a  passionate 
votary  of  the  beautiful,  she  should  to-day  burn  everything  that  she 
has  adored.  It  is  doubtless  too  soon  to  judge  her,  and  there  are 
moments  when  one  is  willing  to  forgive  her  even  the  restoration 
of  St.  Mark's.  Inside  as  well  there  has  been  a  considerable  at 
tempt  to  make  the  place  more  tidy ;  but  the  general  effect,  as  yet, 
has  not  seriously  suffered.  What  I  chiefly  remember  is  the  straight 
ening  out  of  that  dark  and  rugged  old  pavement  —  those  deep 
undulations  of  primitive  mosaic  in  which  the  fond  spectator  was 
thought  to  perceive  an  intended  resemblance  to  the  waves  of  the 
ocean.  Whether  intended  or  not  the  analogy  was  an  image  the 
more  in  a  treasure-house  of  images ;  but  from  a  considerable  por 
tion  of  the  church  it  has  now  disappeared.  Throughout  the  greater 
part  indeed  the  pavement  remains  as  recent  generations  have 
known  it  —  dark,  rich,  cracked,  uneven,  spotted  with  porphyry  and 
time-blackened  malachite,  polished  by  the  knees  of  innumerable 
worshippers ;  but  in  other  large  stretches  the  idea  imitated  by  the 
restorers  is  that  of  the  ocean  in  a  dead  calm,  and  the  model  they 
have  taken  the  floor  of  a  London  club-house  or  of  a  New  York 
hotel.  I  think  no  Venetian  and  scarcely  any  Italian  cares  much 
for  such  differences ;  and  when,  a  year  ago,  people  in  England  were 
writing  to  the  Times  about  the  whole  business  and  holding  meet 
ings  to  protest  against  it  the  dear  children  of  the  lagoon  —  so  far 
as  they  heard  or  heeded  the  rumour  —  thought  them  partly  busy- 
bodies  and  partly  asses.  Busy-bodies  they  doubtless  were,  but 
they  took  a  good  deal  of  disinterested  trouble.  It  never  occurs  to 

[  -3] 


ITALIAN    HOURS 

the  Venetian  mind  of  to-day  that  such  trouble  may  be  worth  tak 
ing  ;  the  Venetian  mind  vainly  endeavours  to  conceive  a  state  of 
existence  in  which  personal  questions  are  so  insipid  that  people 
have  to  look  for  grievances  in  the  wrongs  of  brick  and  marble.  I 
must  not,  however,  speak  of  St.  Mark's  as  if  I  had  the  pretension 
of  giving  a  description  of  it  or  as  if  the  reader  desired  one.  The 
reader  has  been  too  well  served  already.  It  is  surely  the  best- 
described  building  in  the  world.  Open  the  Stones  of  Venice,  open 
Theophile  Gautier's  Italia,  and  you  will  see.  These  writers  take 
it  very  seriously,  and  it  is  only  because  there  is  another  way  of 
taking  it  that  I  venture  to  speak  of  it ;  the  way  that  offers  itself 
after  you  have  been  in  Venice  a  couple  of  months,  and  the  light  is 
hot  in  the  great  Square,  and  you  pass  in  under  the  pictured  porti 
coes  with  a  feeling  of  habit  and  friendliness  and  a  desire  for  some 
thing  cool  and  dark.  There  are  moments,  after  all,  when  the 
church  is  comparatively  quiet  and  empty,  and  when  you  may  sit 
there  with  an  easy  consciousness  of  its  beauty.  From  the  moment, 
of  course,  that  you  go  into  any  Italian  church  for  any  purpose  but 
to  say  your  prayers  or  look  at  the  ladies,  you  rank  yourself  among 
the  trooping  barbarians  I  just  spoke  of;  you  treat  the  place  as  an 
orifice  in  the  peep-show.  Still,  it  is  almost  a  spiritual  function  — 
or,  at  the  worst,  an  amorous  one  —  to  feed  one's  eyes  on  the  mol 
ten  colour  that  drops  from  the  hollow  vaults  and  thickens  the  air 
with  its  richness.  It  is  all  so  quiet  and  sad  and  faded  and  yet  all  so 
brilliant  and  living.  The  strange  figures  in  the  mosaic  pictures, 
bending  with  the  curve  of  niche  and  vault,  stare  down  through  the 
glowing  dimness;  the  burnished  gold  that  stands  behind  them 

[  HI 


VENICE 

catches  the  light  on  its  little  uneven  cubes.  St.  Mark's  owes  no 
thing  of  its  character  to  the  beauty  of  proportion  or  perspective ; 
there  is  nothing  grandly  balanced  or  far-arching;  there  are  no  long 
lines  nor  triumphs  of  the  perpendicular.  The  church  arches  in 
deed,  but  arches  like  a  dusky  cavern.  Beauty  of  surface,  of  tone, 
of  detail,  of  things  near  enough  to  touch  and  kneel  upon  and 
lean  against  —  it  is  from  this  the  effect  proceeds.  In  this  sort  of 
beauty  the  place  is  incredibly  rich,  and  you  may  go  there  every  day 
and  find  afresh  some  lurking  pictorial  nook.  It  is  a  treasury  of 
bits,  as  the  painters  say ;  and  there  are  usually  three  or  four  of 
the  fraternity  with  their  easels  set  up  in  uncertain  equilibrium  on 
the  undulating  floor.  It  is  not  easy  to  catch  the  real  complexion 
of  St.  Mark's,  and  these  laudable  attempts  at  portraiture  are  apt 
to  look  either  lurid  or  livid.  But  if  you  cannot  paint  the  old 
loose-looking  marble  slabs,  the  great  panels  of  basalt  and  jasper, 
the  crucifixes  of  which  the  lonely  anguish  looks  deeper  in  the  ver 
tical  light,  the  tabernacles  whose  open  doors  disclose  a  dark  By 
zantine  image  spotted  with  dull,  crooked  gems  —  if  you  cannot 
paint  these  things  you  can  at  least  grow  fond  of  them.  You  grow 
fond  even  of  the  old  benches  of  red  marble,  partly  worn  away  by 
the  breeches  of  many  generations  and  attached  to  the  base  of  those 
wide  pilasters  of  which  the  precious  plating,  delightful  in  its  faded 
brownness,  with  a  faint  grey  bloom  upon  it,  bulges  and  yawns  a 
little  with  honourable  age. 


ITALIAN    HOURS 

IV 

EVEN  at  first,  when  the  vexatious  sense  of  the  city  of  the  Doges 
reduced  to  earning  its  living  as  a  curiosity-shop  was  in  its  keen 
ness,  there  was  a  great  deal  of  entertainment  to  be  got  from 
lodging  on  Riva  Schiavoni  and  looking  out  at  the  far-shimmering 
lagoon.  There  was  entertainment  indeed  in  simply  getting  into 
the  place  and  observing  the  queer  incidents  of  a  Venetian  instal 
lation.  A  great  many  persons  contribute  indirectly  to  this  under 
taking,  and  it  is  surprising  how  they  spring  out  at  you  during 
your  novitiate  to  remind  you  that  they  are  bound  up  in  some 
mysterious  manner  with  the  constitution  of  your  little  establish 
ment.  It  was  an  interesting  problem  for  instance  to  trace  the 
subtle  connection  existing  between  the  niece  of  the  landlady  and 
the  occupancy  of  the  fourth  floor.  Superficially  it  was  none  too 
visible,  as  the  young  lady  in  question  was  a  dancer  at  the  Fenice 
theatre  —  or  when  that  was  closed  at  the  Rossini  —  and  might 
have  been  supposed  absorbed  by  her  professional  duties.  It  proved 
necessary,  however,  that  she  should  hover  about  the  premises 
in  a  velvet  jacket  and  a  pair  of  black  kid  gloves  with  one  little 
white  button;  as  also,  that  she  should  apply  a  thick  coating  of 
powder  to  her  face,  which  had  a  charming  oval  and  a  sweet 
weak  expression,  like  that  of  most  of  the  Venetian  maidens, 
who,  as  a  general  thing  —  it  was  not  a  peculiarity  of  the  land 
lady's  niece  —  are  fond  of  besmearing  themselves  with  flour. 
You  soon  recognise  that  it  is  not  Only  the  many-twinkling  lagoon 

[  16] 


VENICE 

you  behold  from  a  habitation  on  the  Riva;  you  see  a  little  of 
everything  Venetian.  Straight  across,  before  my  windows,  rose 
the  great  pink  mass  of  San  Giorgio  Maggiore,  which  has  for  an 
ugly  Palladian  church  a  success  beyond  all  reason.  It  is  a  success 
of  position,  of  colour,  of  the  immense  detached  Campanile, 
tipped  with  a  tall  gold  angel.  I  know  not  whether  it  is  because 
San  Giorgio  is  so  grandly  conspicuous,  with  a  great  deal  of 
worn,  faded-looking  brickwork ;  but  for  many  persons  the  whole 
place  has  a  kind  of  suffusion  of  rosiness.  Asked  what  may  be 
the  leading  colour  in  the  Venetian  concert,  we  should  inveter- 
ately  say  Pink,  and  yet  without  remembering  after  all  that  this 
elegant  hue  occurs  very  often.  It  is  a  faint,  shimmering,  airy, 
watery  pink;  the  bright  sea-light  seems  to  flush  with  it  and  the 
pale  whiteish-green  of  lagoon  and  canal  to  drink  it  in.  There  is 
indeed  a  great  deal  of  very  evident  brickwork,  which  is  never 
fresh  or  loud  in  colour,  but  always  burnt  out,  as  it  were,  always 
exquisitely  mild. 

Certain  little  mental  pictures  rise  before  the  collector  of  memo 
ries  at  the  simple  mention,  written  or  spoken,  of  the  places  he 
has  loved.  When  I  hear,  when  I  see,  the  magical  name  I  have 
written  above  these  pages,  it  is  not  of  the  great  Square  that  I  think, 
with  its  strange  basilica  and  its  high  arcades,  nor  of  the  wide 
mouth  of  the  Grand  Canal,  with  the  stately  steps  and  the  well- 
poised  dome  of  the  Salute ;  it  is  not  of  the  low  lagoon,  nor  the 
sweet  Piazzetta,  nor  the  dark  chambers  of  St.  Mark's.  I  simply 
see  a  narrow  canal  in  the  heart  of  the  city  —  a  patch  of  green 
water  and  a  surface  of  pink  wall.  The  gondola  moves  slowly ; 

1 17] 


ITALIAN    HOURS 

it  gives  a  great  smooth  swerve,  passes  under  a  bridge,  and  the 
gondolier's  cry,  carried  over  the  quiet  water,  makes  a  kind  of 
splash  in  the  stillness.  A  girl  crosses  the  little  bridge,  which 
has  an  arch  like  a  camel's  back,  with  an  old  shawl  on  her  head, 
which  makes  her  characteristic  and  charming;  you  see  her 
against  the  sky  as  you  float  beneath.  The  pink  of  the  old  wall 
seems  to  fill  the  whole  place ;  it  sinks  even  into  the  opaque  water. 
Behind  the  wall  is  a  garden,  out  of  which  the  long  arm  of  a 
white  June  rose  —  the  roses  of  Venice  are  splendid  —  has  flung 
itself  by  way  of  spontaneous  ornament.  On  the  other  side  of 
this  small  water-way  is  a  great  shabby  facade  of  Gothic  windows 
and  balconies  —  balconies  on  which  dirty  clothes  are  hung  and 
under  which  a  cavernous-looking  doorway  opens  from  a  low 
flight  of  slimy  water-steps.  It  is  very  hot  and  still,  the  canal  has 
a  queer  smell,  and  the  whole  place  is  enchanting. 

It  is  poor  work,  however,  talking  about  the  colour  of  things 
in  Venice.  The  fond  spectator  is  perpetually  looking  at  it  from 
his  window,  when  he  is  not  floating  about  with  that  delightful 
sense  of  being  for  the  moment  a  part  of  it,  which  any  gentleman 
in  a  gondola  is  free  to  entertain.  Venetian  windows  and  bal 
conies  are  a  dreadful  lure,  and  while  you  rest  your  elbows  on  these 
cushioned  ledges  the  precious  hours  fly  away.  But  in  truth 
Venice  is  n't  in  fair  weather  a  place  for  concentration  of  mind. 
The  effort  required  for  sitting  down  to  a  writing-table  is  heroic, 
and  the  brightest  page  of  MS.  looks  dull  beside  the  brilliancy  of 
your  milieu.  All  nature  beckons  you  forth  and  murmurs  to  you 
sophistically  that  such  hours  should  be  devoted  to  collecting 

[  18  ] 


V 


A     NARROW     CANAL,     VENICE. 


VENICE 

impressions.  Afterwards,  in  ugly  places,  at  unprivileged  times, 
you  can  convert  your  impressions  into  prose.  Fortunately  for 
the  present  proser  the  weather  was  n't  always  fine ;  the  first  month 
was  wet  and  windy,  and  it  was  better  to  judge  of  the  matter  from 
an  open  casement  than  to  respond  to  the  advances  of  persuasive 
gondoliers.  Even  then  however  there  was  a  constant  entertain 
ment  in  the  view.  It  was  all  cold  colour,  and  the  steel-grey  floor 
of  the  lagoon  was  stroked  the  wrong  way  by  the  wind.  Then 
there  were  charming  cool  intervals,  when  the  churches,  the 
houses,  the  anchored  fishing-boats,  the  whole  gently-curving 
line  of  the  Riva,  seemed  to  be  washed  with  a  pearly  white.  Later 
it  all  turned  warm  —  warm  to  the  eye  as  well  as  to  other  senses. 
After  the  middle  of  May  the  whole  place  was  in  a  glow.  The 
sea  took  on  a  thousand  shades,  but  they  were  only  infinite  varia 
tions  of  blue,  and  those  rosy  walls  I  just  spoke  of  began  to  flush 
in  the  thick  sunshine.  Every  patch  of  colour,  every  yard  of 
weather-stained  stucco,  every  glimpse  of  nestling  garden  or  daub 
of  sky  above  a  calle,  began  to  shine  and  sparkle  —  began,  as  the 
painters  say,  to  "compose."  The  lagoon  was  streaked  with  odd 
currents,  which  played  across  it  like  huge  smooth  finger-marks. 
The  gondolas  multiplied  and  spotted  it  all  over;  every  gondola 
and  gondolier  looking,  at  a  distance,  precisely  like  every  other. 
There  is  something  strange  and  fascinating  in  this  mysterious 
impersonality  of  the  gondola.  It  has  an  identity  when  you  are 
in  it,  but,  thanks  to  their  all  being  of  the  same  size,  shape  and 
colour,  and  of  the  same  deportment  and  gait,  it  has  none,  or  as 
little  as  possible,  as  you  see  it  pass  before  you.  From  my  win- 


ITALIAN    HOURS 

dows  on  the  Riva  there  was  always  the  same  silhouette  —  the 
long,  black,  slender  skiff,  lifting  its  head  and  throwing  it  back 
a  little,  moving  yet  seeming  not  to  move,  with  the  grotesquely- 
graceful  figure  on  the  poop.  This  figure  inclines,  as  may  be, 
more  to  the  graceful  or  to  the  grotesque  —  standing  in  the 
"second  position"  of  the  dancing-master,  but  indulging  from 
the  waist  upward  in  a  freedom  of  movement  which  that  func 
tionary  would  deprecate.  One  may  say  as  a  general  thing  that 
there  is  something  rather  awkward  in  the  movement  even  of  the 
most  graceful  gondolier,  and  something  graceful  in  the  move 
ment  of  the  most  awkward.  In  the  graceful  men  of  course  the 
grace  predominates,  and  nothing  can  be  finer  than  the  large,  firm 
way  in  which,  from  their  point  of  vantage,  they  throw  themselves 
over  their  tremendous  oar.  It  has  the  boldness  of  a  plunging 
bird  and  the  regularity  of  a  pendulum.  Sometimes,  as  you  see 
this  movement  in  profile,  in  a  gondola  that  passes  you  —  see, 
as  you  recline  on  your  own  low  cushions,  the  arching  body  of  the 
gondolier  lifted  up  against  the  sky  —  it  has  a  kind  of  nobleness 
which  suggests  an  image  on  a  Greek  frieze.  The  gondolier  at 
Venice  is  your  very  good  friend  —  if  you  choose  him  happily  — 
and  on  the  quality  of  the  personage  depends  a  good  deal  that 
of  your  impressions.  He  is  a  part  of  your  daily  life,  your  double, 
your  shadow,  your  complement.  Most  people,  I  think,  either 
like  their  gondolier  or  hate  him ;  and  if  they  like  him,  like  him 
very  much.  In  this  case  they  take  an  interest  in  him  after  his 
departure ;  wish  him  to  be  sure  of  employment,  speak  of  him  as 
the  gem  of  gondoliers  and  tell  their  friends  to  be  certain  to 

[20  ] 


VENICE 

"secure"  him.  There  is  usually  no  difficulty  in  securing  him; 
there  is  nothing  elusive  or  reluctant  about  a  gondolier.  Nothing 
would  induce  me  not  to  believe  them  for  the  most  part  excellent 
fellows,  and  the  sentimental  tourist  must  always  have  a  kind 
ness  for  them.  More  than  the  rest  of  the  population,  of  course, 
they  are  the  children  of  Venice;  they  are  associated  with  its  idio 
syncrasy,  with  its  essence,  with  its  silence,  with  its  melancholy. 

When  I  say  they  are  associated  with  its  silence  I  should 
immediately  add  that  they  are  associated  also  with  its  sound. 
Among  themselves  they  are  an  extraordinarily  talkative  com 
pany.  They  chatter  at  the  traghetti,  where  they  always  have 
some  sharp  point  under  discussion ;  they  bawl  across  the  canals ; 
they  bespeak  your  commands  as  you  approach ;  they  defy  each 
other  from  afar.  If  you  happen  to  have  a  traghetto  under  your 
window,  you  are  well  aware  that  they  are  a  vocal  race.  I  should 
go  even  further  than  I  went  just  now,  and  say  that  the  voice  of 
the  gondolier  is  in  fact  for  audibility  the  dominant  or  rather 
the  only  note  of  Venice.  There  is  scarcely  another  heard  sound, 
and  that  indeed  is  part  of  the  interest  of  the  place.  There  is  no 
noise  there  save  distinctly  human  noise ;  no  rumbling,  no  vague 
uproar,  nor  rattle  of  wheels  and  hoofs.  It  is  all  articulate  and 
vocal  and  personal.  One  may  say  indeed  that  Venice  is  em 
phatically  the  city  of  conversation ;  people  talk  all  over  the  place 
because  there  is  nothing  to  interfere  with  its  being  caught  by 
the  ear.  Among  the  populace  it  is  a  general  family  party.  The 
still  water  carries  the  voice,  and  good  Venetians  exchange  con 
fidences  at  a  distance  of  half  a  mile.  It  saves  a  world  of  trouble, 

[21] 


ITALIAN    HOURS 

and  they  don't  like  trouble.  Their  delightful  garrulous  lan 
guage  helps  them  to  make  Venetian  life  a  long  conversazione.  This 
language,  with  its  soft  elisions,  its  odd  transpositions,  its  kindly 
contempt  for  consonants  and  other  disagreeables,  has  in  it  some 
thing  peculiarly  human  and  accommodating.  If  your  gondolier 
had  no  other  merit  he  would  have  the  merit  that  he  speaks 
Venetian.  This  may  rank  as  a  merit  even  —  some  people  per 
haps  would  say  especially  —  when  you  don't  understand  what 
he  says.  But  he  adds  to  it  other  graces  which  make  him  an 
agreeable  feature  in  your  life.  The  price  he  sets  on  his  services 
is  touchingly  small,  and  he  has  a  happy  art  of  being  obsequious 
without  being,  or  at  least  without  seeming,  abject.  For  occa 
sional  liberalities  he  evinces  an  almost  lyrical  gratitude.  In  short 
he  has  delightfully  good  manners,  a  merit  which  he  shares  for 
the  most  part  with  the  Venetians  at  large.  One  grows  very  fond 
of  these  people,  and  the  reason  of  one's  fondness  is  the  frank 
ness  and  sweetness  of  their  address.  That  of  the  Italian  family 
at  large  has  much  to  recommend  it ;  but  in  the  Venetian  manner 
there  is  something  peculiarly  ingratiating.  One  feels  that  the 
race  is  old,  that  it  has  a  long  and  rich  civilisation  in  its  blood, 
and  that  if  it  has  n't  been  blessed  by  fortune  it  has  at  least 
been  polished  by  time.  It  has  n't  a  genius  for  stiff  morality,  and 
indeed  makes  few  pretensions  in  that  direction.  It  scruples 
but  scantly  to  represent  the  false  as  the  true,  and  has  been 
accused  of  cultivating  the  occasion  to  grasp  and  to  overreach, 
and  of  steering  a  crooked  course  —  not  to  your  and  my  advan 
tage —  amid  the  sanctities  of  property.  It  has  been  accused 

[22   ] 


VENICE 

further  of  loving  if  not  too  well  at  least  too  often,  of  being  in 
fine  as  little  austere  as  possible.  I  am  not  sure  it  is  very  brave, 
nor  struck  with  its  being  very  industrious.  But  it  has  an  un 
failing  sense  of  the  amenities  of  life;  the  poorest  Venetian  is  a 
natural  man  of  the  world.  He  is  better  company  than  persons 
of  his  class  are  apt  to  be  among  the  nations  of  industry  and 
virtue  —  where  people  are  also  sometimes  perceived  to  lie  and 
steal  and  otherwise  misconduct  themselves.  He  has  a  great 
desire  to  please  and  to  be  pleased. 


IN  that  matter  at  least  the  cold-blooded  stranger  begins  at  last 
to  imitate  him ;  begins  to  lead  a  life  that  shall  be  before  all  things 
easy;  unless  indeed  he  allow  himself,  like  Mr.  Ruskin,  to  be  put 
out  of  humour  by  Titian  and  Tiepolo.  The  hours  he  spends 
among  the  pictures  are  his  best  hours  in  Venice,  and  I  am 
ashamed  to  have  written  so  much  of  common  things  when  I 
might  have  been  making  festoons  of  the  names  of  the  masters. 
Only,  when  we  have  covered  our  page  with  such  festoons  what 
more  is  left  to  say  ?  When  one  has  said  Carpaccio  and  Bellini, 
the  Tintoret  and  the  Veronese,  one  has  struck  a  note  that  must 
be  left  to  resound  at  will.  Everything  has  been  said  about  the 
mighty  painters,  and  it  is  of  little  importance  that  a  pilgrim  the 
more  has  found  them  to  his  taste.  "Went  this  morning  to  the 
Academy;  was  very  much  pleased  with  Titian's  'Assumption/' 

[23  ] 


ITALIAN    HOURS 

That  honest  phrase  has  doubtless  been  written  in  many  a  trav 
eller's  diary,  and  was  not  indiscreet  on  the  part  of  its  author. 
But  it  appeals  little  to  the  general  reader,  and  we  must  more 
over  notoriously  not  expose  our  deepest  feelings.  Since  I  have 
mentioned  Titian's  "Assumption"  I  must  say  that  there  are 
some  people  who  have  been  less  pleased  with  it  than  the  observer 
we  have  just  imagined.  It  is  one  of  the  possible  disappoint 
ments  of  Venice,  and  you  may  if  you  like  take  advantage  of 
your  privilege  of  not  caring  for  it.  It  imparts  a  look  of  great 
richness  to  the  side  of  the  beautiful  room  of  the  Academy  on 
which  it  hangs ;  but  the  same  room  contains  two  or  three  works 
less  known  to  fame  which  are  equally  capable  of  inspiring  a 
passion.  "The  *  Annunciation'  struck  me  as  coarse  and  super 
ficial":  that  note  was  once  made  in  a  simple-minded  tourist's 
book.  At  Venice,  strange  to  say,  Titian  is  altogether  a  disap 
pointment;  the  city  of  his  adoption  is  far  from  containing  the 
best  of  him.  Madrid,  Paris,  London,  Florence,  Dresden,  Munich 
—  these  are  the  homes  of  his  greatness. 

There  are  other  painters  who  have  but  a  single  home,  and 
the  greatest  of  these  is  the  Tintoret.  Close  beside  him  sit  Car- 
paccio  and  Bellini,  who  make  with  him  the  dazzling  Venetian 
trio.  The  Veronese  may  be  seen  and  measured  in  other  places ; 
he  is  most  splendid  in  Venice,  but  he  shines  in  Paris  and  in  Dres 
den.  You  may  walk  out  of  the  noon-day  dusk  of  Trafalgar 
Square  in  November,  and  in  one  of  the  chambers  of  the  National 
Gallery  see  the  family  of  Darius  rustling  and  pleading  and 
weeping  at  the  feet  of  Alexander.  Alexander  is  a  beautiful  young 

[24] 


VENICE 

Venetian  in  crimson  pantaloons,  and  the  picture  sends  a  glow 
into  the  cold  London  twilight.  You  may  sit  before  it  for  an  hour 
and  dream  you  are  floating  to  the  water-gate  of  the  Ducal  Pal 
ace,  where  a  certain  old  beggar  who  has  one  of  the  handsomest 
heads  in  the  world  —  he  has  sat  to  a  hundred  painters  for  Doges 
and  for  personages  more  sacred  —  has  a  prescriptive  right  to  pre 
tend  to  pull  your  gondola  to  the  steps  and  to  hold  out  a  greasy 
immemorial  cap.  But  you  must  go  to  Venice  in  very  fact  to  see 
the  other  masters,  who  form  part  of  your  life  while  you  are  there, 
who  illuminate  your  view  of  the  universe.  It  is  difficult  to  express 
one's  relation  to  them ;  the  whole  Venetian  art-world  is  so  near, 
so  familiar,  so  much  an  extension  and  adjunct  of  the  spreading 
actual,  that  it  seems  almost  invidious  to  say  one  owes  more  to 
one  of  them  than  to  the  other.  Nowhere,  not  even  in  Holland, 
where  the  correspondence  between  the  real  aspects  and  the 
little  polished  canvases  is  so  constant  and  so  exquisite,  do  art 
and  life  seem  so  interfused  and,  as  it  were,  so  consanguineous. 
All  the  splendour  of  light  and  colour,  all  the  Venetian  air  and  the 
Venetian  history  are  on  the  walls  and  ceilings  of  the  palaces; 
and  all  the  genius  of  the  masters,  all  the  images  and  visions 
they  have  left  upon  canvas,  seem  to  tremble  in  the  sunbeams 
and  dance  upon  the  waves.  That  is  the  perpetual  interest  of  the 
place  —  that  you  live  in  a  certain  sort  of  knowledge  as  in  a  rosy 
cloud.  You  don't  go  into  the  churches  and  galleries  by  way  of 
a  change  from  the  streets ;  you  go  into  them  because  they  offer 
you  an  exquisite  reproduction  of  the  things  that  surround  you. 
All  Venice  was  both  rnodel  and  painter,  and  life  was  so  picto- 

[25] 


ITALIAN    HOURS 

rial  that  art  could  n't  help  becoming  so.  With  all  diminutions 
life  is  pictorial  still,  and  this  fact  gives  an  extraordinary  fresh 
ness  to  one's  perception  of  the  great  Venetian  works.  You  judge 
of  them  not  as  a  connoisseur,  but  as  a  man  of  the  world,  and 
you  enjoy  them  because  they  are  so  social  and  so  true.  Perhaps 
of  all  works  of  art  that  are  equally  great  they  demand  least  re 
flection  on  the  part  of  the  spectator  —  they  make  least  of  a  mys 
tery  of  being  enjoyed.  Reflection  only  confirms  your  admiration, 
yet  is  almost  ashamed  to  show  its  head.  These  things  speak  so 
frankly  and  benignantly  to  the  sense  that  even  when  they  arrive 
at  the  highest  style  —  as  in  the  Tintoret's  "  Presentation  of  the 
little  Virgin  at  the  Temple"  —they  are  still  more  familiar. 

But  it  is  hard,  as  I  say,  to  express  all  this,  and  it  is  painful 
as  well  to  attempt  it  —  painful  because  in  the  memory  of  vanished 
hours  so  filled  with  beauty  the  consciousness  of  present  loss 
oppresses.  Exquisite  hours,  enveloped  in  light  and  silence,  to 
have  known  them  once  is  to  have  always  a  terrible  standard  of 
enjoyment.  Certain  lovely  mornings  of  May  and  June  come 
back  with  an  ineffaceable  fairness.  Venice  is  n't  smothered  in 
flowers  at  this  season,  in  the  manner  of  Florence  and  Rome; 
but  the  sea  and  sky  themselves  seem  to  blossom  and  rustle. 
The  gondola  waits  at  the  wave-washed  steps,  and  if  you  are 
wise  you  will  take  your  place  beside  a  discriminating  companion. 
Such  a  companion  in  Venice  should  of  course  be  of  the  sex  that 
discriminates  most  finely.  An  intelligent  woman  who  knows 
her  Venice  seems  doubly  intelligent,  and  it  makes  no  woman's 
perceptions  less  keen  to  be  aware  that  she  can't  help  looking 

[26  ] 


VENICE 

graceful  as  she  is  borne  over  the  waves.  The  handsome  Pas- 
quale,  with  uplifted  oar,  awaits  your  command,  knowing,  in  a 
general  way,  from  observation  of  your  habits,  that  your  inten 
tion  is  to  go  to  see  a  picture  or  two.  It  perhaps  does  n't  immensely 
matter  what  picture  you  choose :  the  whole  affair  is  so  charming. 
It  is  charming  to  wander  through  the  light  and  shade  of  intricate 
canals,  with  perpetual  architecture  above  you  and  perpetual 
fluidity  beneath.  It  is  charming  to  disembark  at  the  polished 
steps  of  a  little  empty  campo  —  a  sunny  shabby  square  with  an  old 
well  in  the  middle,  an  old  church  on  one  side  and  tall  Venetian 
windows  looking  down.  Sometimes  the  windows  are  tenantless; 
sometimes  a  lady  in  a  faded  dressing-gown  leans  vaguely  on  the 
sill.  There  is  always  an  old  man  holding  out  his  hat  for  coppers ; 
there  are  always  three  or  four  small  boys  dodging  possible 
umbrella-pokes  while  they  precede  you,  in  the  manner  of  custo 
dians,  to  the  door  of  the  church. 


VI 


THE  churches  of  Venice  are  rich  in  pictures,  and  many  a  master 
piece  lurks  in  the  unaccommodating  gloom  of  side-chapels  and 
sacristies.  Many  a  noble  work  is  perched  behind  the  dusty  can 
dles  and  muslin  roses  of  a  scantily-vfsited  altar;  some  of  them 
indeed,  hidden  behind  the  altar,  suffer  in  a  darkness  that  can 
never  be  explored.  The  facilities  offered  you  for  approaching  the 
picture  in  such  cases  ar.e  a  mockery  of  your  irritated  wish.  You 

[27] 


ITALIAN    HOURS 

stand  at  tip-toe  on  a  three-legged  stool,  you  climb  a  rickety  lad 
der,  you  almost  mount  upon  the  shoulders  of  the  custode.  You 
do  everything  but  see  the  picture.  You  see  just  enough  to  be  sure 
it's  beautiful.  You  catch  a  glimpse  of  a  divine  head,  of  a  fig- 
tree  against  a  mellow  sky,  but  the  rest  is  impenetrable  mystery. 
You  renounce  all  hope,  for  instance,  of  approaching  the  mag 
nificent  Cima  da  Conegliano  in  San  Giovanni  in  Bragora;  and 
bethinking  yourself  of  the  immaculate  purity  that  shines  in  the 
spirit  of  this  master,  you  renounce  it  with  chagrin  and  pain. 
Behind  the  high  altar  in  that  church  hangs  a  Baptism  of  Christ 
by  Cima  which  I  believe  has  been  more  or  less  repainted.  You 
make  the  thing  out  in  spots,  you  see  it  has  a  fulness  of  perfec 
tion.  But  you  turn  away  from  it  with  a  stiff  neck  and  promise 
yourself  consolation  in  the  Academy  and  at  the  Madonna  dell' 
Orto,  where  two  noble  works  by  the  same  hand  —  pictures  as 
clear  as  a  summer  twilight  —  present  themselves  in  better  cir 
cumstances.  It  may  be  said  as  a  general  thing  that  you  never 
see  the  Tintoret.  You  admire  him,  you  adore  him,  you  think 
him  the  greatest  of  painters,  but  in  the  great  majority  of  cases 
your  eyes  fail  to  deal  with  him.  This  is  partly  his  own  fault; 
so  many  of  his  works  have  turned  to  blackness  and  are  positively 
rotting  in  their  frames.  At  the  Scuola  di  San  Rocco,  where  there 
are  acres  of  him,  there  is  scarcely  anything  at  all  adequately  visi 
ble  save  the  immense  "Crucifixion"  in  the  upper  story.  It  is 
true  that  in  looking  at  this  huge  composition  you  look  at  many 
pictures ;  it  has  not  only  a  multitude  of  figures  but  a  wealth  of 
episodes ;  and  you  pass  from  one  of  these  to  the  other  as  if  you 

[28  ] 


VENICE 

were  "doing'*  a  gallery.  Surely  no  single  picture  in  the  world 
contains  more  of  human  life;  there  is  everything  in  it,  including 
the  most  exquisite  beauty.  It  is  one  of  the  greatest  things  of  art ; 
it  is  always  interesting.  There  are  works  of  the  artist  which 
contain  touches  more  exquisite,  revelations  of  beauty  more  ra 
diant,  but  there  is  no  other  vision  of  so  intense  a  reality,  an  exe 
cution  so  splendid.  The  interest,  the  impressiveness,  of  that 
whole  corner  of  Venice,  however  melancholy  the  effect  of  its  gor 
geous  and  ill-lighted  chambers,  gives  a  strange  importance  to  a 
visit  to  the  Scuola.  Nothing  that  all  travellers  go  to  see  appears 
to  suffer  less  from  the  incursions  of  travellers.  It  is  one  of  the 
loneliest  booths  of  the  bazaar,  and  the  author  of  these  lines  has 
always  had  the  good  fortune,  which  he  wishes  to  every  other 
traveller,  of  having  it  to  himself.  I  think  most  visitors  find  the 
place  rather  alarming  and  wicked-looking.  They  walk  about 
a  while  among  the  fitful  figures  that  gleam  here  and  there  out 
of  the  great  tapestry  (as  it  were)  with  which  the  painter  has 
hung  all  the  walls,  and  then,  depressed  and  bewildered  by  the 
portentous  solemnity  of  these  objects,  by  strange  glimpses  of 
unnatural  scenes,  by  the  echo  of  their  lonely  footsteps  on  the 
vast  stone  floors,  they  take  a  hasty  departure,  finding  themselves 
again,  with  a  sense  of  release  from  danger,  a  sense  that  the  genius 
loci  was  a  sort  of  mad  white-washer  who  worked  with  a  bad 
mixture,  in  the  bright  light  of  the  campo,  among  the  beggars,  the 
orange-vendors  and  the  passing  gondolas.  Solemn  indeed  is  the 
place,  solemn  and  strangely  suggestive,  for  the  simple  reason  that 
we  shall  scarcely  find  four  walls  elsewhere  that  inclose  within  a 

[29] 


ITALIAN    HOURS 

like  area  an  equal  quantity  of  genius.  The  air  is  thick  with  it 
and  dense  and  difficult  to  breathe ;  for  it  was  genius  that  was  not 
happy,  inasmuch  as  it  lacked  the  art  to  fix  itself  for  ever.  It  is 
not  immortality  that  we  breathe  at  the  Scuola  di  San  Rocco, 
but  conscious,  reluctant  mortality. 

Fortunately,  however,  we  can  turn  to  the  Ducal  Palace, 
where  everything  is  so  brilliant  and  splendid  that  the  poor  dusky 
Tintoret  is  lifted  in  spite  of  himself  into  the  concert.  This  deeply 
original  building  is  of  course  the  loveliest  thing  in  Venice,  and 
a  morning's  stroll  there  is  a  wonderful  illumination.  Cunningly 
select  your  hour  —  half  the  enjoyment  of  Venice  is  a  question 
of  dodging  —  and  enter  at  about  one  o'clock,  when  the  tourists 
have  flocked  off  to  lunch  and  the  echoes  of  the  charming  cham 
bers  have  gone  to  sleep  among  the  sunbeams.  There  is  no  brighter 
place  in  Venice  —  by  which  I  mean  that  on  the  whole  there 
is  none  half  so  bright.  The  reflected  sunshine  plays  up  through 
the  great  windows  from  the  glittering  lagoon  and  shimmers  and 
twinkles  over  gilded  walls  and  ceilings.  All  the  history  of  Ven 
ice,  all  its  splendid  stately  past,  glows  around  you  in  a  strong  sea- 
light.  Every  one  here  is  magnificent,  but  the  great  Veronese  is 
the  most  magnificent  of  all.  He  swims  before  you  in  a  silver  cloud ; 
he  thrones  in  an  eternal  morning.  The  deep  blue  sky  burns 
behind  him,  streaked  across  with  milky  bars;  the  white  colon 
nades  sustain  the  richest  canopies,  under  which  the  first  gentle 
men  and  ladies  in  the  world  both  render  homage  and  receive 
it.  Their  glorious  garments  rustle  in  the  air  of  the  sea  and  their 
sun-lighted  faces  are  the  very  complexion  of  Venice.  The  mix- 

[30] 


VENICE 

ture  of  pride  and  piety,  of  politics  and  religion,  of  art  and  patriot 
ism,  gives  a  splendid  dignity  to  every  scene.  Never  was  a  painter 
more  nobly  joyous,  never  did  an  artist  take  a  greater  delight  in 
life,  seeing  it  all  as  a  kind  of  breezy  festival  and  feeling  it  through 
the  medium  of  perpetual  success.  He  revels  in  the  gold-framed 
ovals  of  the  ceilings,  multiplies  himself  there  with  the  fluttering 
movement  of  an  embroidered  banner  that  tosses  itself  into  the 
blue.  He  was  the  happiest  of  painters  and  produced  the  happiest 
picture  in  the  world.  "The  Rape  of  Europa"  surely  deserves 
this  title ;  it  is  impossible  to  look  at  it  without  aching  with  envy. 
Nowhere  else  in  art  is  such  a  temperament  revealed;  never  did 
inclination  and  opportunity  combine  to  express  such  enjoyment. 
The  mixture  of  flowers  and  gems  and  brocade,  of  blooming 
flesh  and  shining  sea  and  waving  groves,  of  youth,  health,  move 
ment,  desire  —  all  this  is  the  brightest  vision  that  ever  descended 
upon  the  soul  of  a  painter.  Happy  the  artist  who  could  enter 
tain  such  a  vision;  happy  the  artist  who  could  paint  it  as  the 
masterpiece  I  here  recall  is  painted. 

The  Tintoret's  visions  were  not  so  bright  as  that ;  but  he  had 
several  that  were  radiant  enough.  In  the  room  that  contains 
the  work  just  cited  are  several  smaller  canvases  by  the  greatly 
more  complex  genius  of  the  Scuola  di  San  Rocco,  which  are  al 
most  simple  in  their  loveliness,  almost  happy  in  their  simplicity. 
They  have  kept  their  brightness  through  the  centuries,  and  they 
shine  with  their  neighbours  in  those  golden  rooms.  There  is  a 
piece  of  painting  in  one  of  them  which  is  one  of  the  sweetest 
things  in  Venice  and  which  reminds  one  afresh  of  those  wild 


ITALIAN    HOURS 

flowers  of  execution  that  bloom  so  profusely  and  so  unheeded 
in  the  dark  corners  of  all  of  the  Tintoret's  work.  "  Pallas  chasing 
away  Mars "  is,  I  believe,  the  name  that  is  given  to  the  picture ; 
and  it  represents  in  fact  a  young  woman  of  noble  appearance 
administering  a  gentle  push  to  a  fine  young  man  in  armour,  as  if  to 
tell  him  to  keep  his  distance.  It  is  of  the  gentleness  of  this  push 
that  I  speak,  the  charming  way  in  which  she  puts  out  her  arm, 
with  a  single  bracelet  on  it,  and  rests  her  young  hand,  its  rosy 
fingers  parted,  on  his  dark  breastplate.  She  bends  her  enchant 
ing  head  with  the  effort  —  a  head  which  has  all  the  strange  fair 
ness  that  the  Tintoret  always  sees  in  women  —  and  the  soft, 
living,  flesh-like  glow  of  all  these  members,  over  which  the  brush 
has  scarcely  paused  in  its  course,  is  as  pretty  an  example  of 
genius  as  all  Venice  can  show.  But  why  speak  of  the  Tintoret 
when  I  can  say  nothing  of  the  great  "Paradise,"  which  unfolds 
its  somewhat  smoky  splendour  and  the  wonder  of  its  multitudi 
nous  circles  in  one  of  the  other  chambers  ?  If  it  were  not  one  of 
the  first  pictures  in  the  world  it  would  be  about  the  biggest, 
and  we  must  confess  that  the  spectator  gets  from  it  at  first  chiefly 
an  impression  of  quantity.  Then  he  sees  that  this  quantity  is 
really  wealth;  that  the  dim  confusion  of  faces  is  a  magnificent 
composition,  and  that  some  of  the  details  of  this  composition 
are  extremely  beautiful.  It  is  impossible  however  in  a  retro 
spect  of  Venice  to  specify  one's  happiest  hours,  though  as  one 
looks  backward  certain  ineffaceable  moments  start  here  and  there 
into  vividness.  How  is  it  possible  to  forget  one's  visits  to  the 
sacristy  of  the  Frari,  however  frequent  they  may  have  been, 


VENICE 

and  the  great  work  of  John  Bellini  which  forms  the  treasure  of 
that  apartment? 


VII 


NOTHING  in  Venice  is  more  perfect  than  this,  and  we  know  of 
no  work  of  art  more  complete.  The  picture  is  in  three  compart 
ments  ;  the  Virgin  sits  in  the  central  division  with  her  child ;  two 
venerable  saints,  standing  close  together,  occupy  each  of  the 
others.  It  is  impossible  to  imagine  anything  more  finished  or  more 
ripe.  It  is  one  of  those  things  that  sum  up  the  genius  of  a  painter, 
the  experience  of  a  life,  the  teaching  of  a  school.  It  seems  painted 
with  molten  gems,  which  have  only  been  clarified  by  time,  and 
it  is  as  solemn  as  it  is  gorgeous  and  as  simple  as  it  is  deep.  Gio 
vanni  Bellini  is  more  or  less  everywhere  in  Venice,  and,  wherever 
he  is,  almost  certain  to  be  first  —  first,  I  mean,  in  his  own  line : 
he  paints  little  else  than  the  Madonna  and  the  saints ;  he  has  not 
Carpaccio's  care  for  human  life  at  large,  nor  the  Tintoret's  nor 
that  of  the  Veronese.  Some  of  his  greater  pictures,  however, 
where  several  figures  are  clustered  together,  have  a  richness  of 
sanctity  that  is  almost  profane.  There  is  one  of  them  on  the 
dark  side  of  the  room  at  the  Academy  that  contains  Titian's 
"Assumption,"  which  if  we  could  only  see  it  —  its  position  is  an 
inconceivable  scandal  —  would  evidently  be  one  of  the  mightiest 
of  so-called  sacred  pictures.  So  too  is  the  Madonna  of  San  Zac- 
caria,  hung  in  a  cold,  dim,  dreary  place,  ever  so  much  too  high, 
but  so  mild  and  serene,  and  so  grandly  disposed  and  accom- 

[33] 


ITALIAN    HOURS 

panied,  that  the  proper  attitude  for  even  the  most  critical  ama 
teur,  as  he  looks  at  it,  strikes  one  as  the  bended  knee.  There  is 
another  noble  John  Bellini,  one  of  the  very  few  in  which  there  is 
no  Virgin,  at  San  Giovanni  Crisostomo  —  a  St.  Jerome,  in  a  red 
dress,  sitting  aloft  upon  the  rocks  and  with  a  landscape  of  ex 
traordinary  purity  behind  him.  The  absence  of  the  peculiarly 
erect  Madonna  makes  it  an  interesting  surprise  among  the  works 
of  the  painter  and  gives  it  a  somewhat  less  strenuous  air.  But  it 
has  brilliant  beauty  and  the  St.  Jerome  is  a  delightful  old  per 
sonage. 

The  same  church  contains  another  great  picture  for  which  the 
haunter  of  these  places  must  find  a  shrine  apart  in  his  memory ; 
one  of  the  most  interesting  things  he  will  have  seen,  if  not  the 
most  brilliant.  Nothing  appeals  more  to  him  than  three  figures 
of  Venetian  ladies  which  occupy  the  foreground  of  a  smallish 
canvas  of  Sebastian  del  Piombo,  placed  above  the  high  altar  of 
San  Giovanni  Crisostomo.  Sebastian  was  a  Venetian  by  birth, 
but  few  of  his  productions  are  to  be  seen  in  his  native  place; 
few  indeed  are  to  be  seen  anywhere.  The  picture  represents  the 
patron-saint  of  the  church,  accompanied  by  other  saints  and  by 
the  worldly  votaries  I  have  mentioned.  These  ladies  stand  to 
gether  on  the  left,  holding  in  their  hands  little  white  caskets; 
two  of  them  are  in  profile,  but  the  foremost  turns  her  face  to 
the  spectator.  This  face  and  figure  are  almost  unique  among 
the  beautiful  things  of  Venice,  and  they  leave  the  susceptible 
observer  with  the  impression  of  having  made,  or  rather  having 
missed,  a  strange,  a  dangerous,  but  a  most  valuable,  acquaintance. 

[34] 


VENICE 

The  lady,  who  is  superbly  handsome,  is  the  typical  Venetian 
of  the  sixteenth  century,  and  she  remains  for  the  mind  the 
perfect  flower  of  that  society.  Never  was  there  a  greater  air 
of  breeding,  a  deeper  expression  of  tranquil  superiority.  She 
walks  a  goddess  —  as  if  she  trod  without  sinking  the  waves 
of  the  Adriatic.  It  is  impossible  to  conceive  a  more  perfect 
expression  of  the  aristocratic  spirit  either  in  its  pride  or  in  its 
benignity.  This  magnificent  creature  is  so  strong  and  secure  that 
she  is  gentle,  and  so  quiet  that  in  comparison  all  minor  assump 
tions  of  calmness  suggest  only  a  vulgar  alarm.  But  for  all 
this  there  are  depths  of  possible  disorder  in  her  light-coloured 
eye. 

I  had  meant  however  to  say  nothing  about  her,  for  it's  not 
right  to  speak  of  Sebastian  when  one  has  n't  found  room  for 
Carpaccio.  These  visions  come  to  one,  and  one  can  neither 
hold  them  nor  brush  them  aside.  Memories  of  Carpaccio,  the 
magnificent,  the  delightful  —  it's  not  for  want  of  such  visitations, 
but  only  for  want  of  space,  that  I  have  n't  said  of  him  what  I 
would.  There  is  little  enough  need  of  it  for  Carpaccio's  sake, 
his  fame  being  brighter  to-day  —  thanks  to  the  generous  lamp 
Mr.  Ruskin  has  held  up  to  it  —  than  it  has  ever  been.  Yet  there 
is  something  ridiculous  in  talking  of  Venice  without  making 
him  almost  the  refrain.  He  and  the  Tintoret  are  the  two  great 
realists,  and  it  is  hard  to  say  which  is  the  more  human,  the  more 
various.  The  Tintoret  had  the  mightier  temperament,  but  Car 
paccio,  who  had  the  advantage  of  more  newness  and  more  re 
sponsibility,  sailed  nearer  to  perfection.  Here  and  there  he  quite 

[35] 


ITALIAN    HOURS 

touches  it,  as  in  the  enchanting  picture,  at  the  Academy,  of  St. 
Ursula  asleep  in  her  little  white  bed,  in  her  high  clean  room,  where 
the  angel  visits  her  at  dawn;  or  in  the  noble  St.  Jerome  in  his 
study  at  S.  Giorgio  Schiavoni.  This  latter  work  is  a  pearl  of 
sentiment,  and  I  may  add  without  being  fantastic  a  ruby  of  colour. 
It  unites  the  most  masterly  finish  with  a  kind  of  universal  large 
ness  of  feeling,  and  he  who  has  it  well  in  his  memory  will  never 
hear  the  name  of  Carpaccio  without  a  throb  of  almost  personal 
affection.  Such  indeed  is  the  feeling  that  descends  upon  you  in 
that  wonderful  little  chapel  of  St.  George  of  the  Slaves,  where 
this  most  personal  and  sociable  of  artists  has  expressed  all  the 
sweetness  of  his  imagination.  The  place  is  small  and  incom 
modious,  the  pictures  are  out  of  sight  and  ill-lighted,  the  custo 
dian  is  rapacious,  the  visitors  are  mutually  intolerable,  but  the 
shabby  little  chapel  is  a  palace  of  art.  Mr.  Ruskin  has  written 
a  pamphlet  about  it  which  is  a  real  aid  to  enjoyment,  though  I 
can't  but  think  the  generous  artist,  with  his  keen  senses  and  his 
just  feeling,  would  have  suffered  to  hear  his  eulogist  declare 
that  one  of  his  other  productions  —  in  the  Museo  Civico  of  Pa 
lazzo  Correr,  a  delightful  portrait  of  two  Venetian  ladies  with 
pet  animals — is  the  "finest  picture  in  the  world."  It  has  no 
need  of  that  to  be  thought  admirable;  and  what  more  can  a 
painter  desire? 


VENICE 


VIII 


MAY  in  Venice  is  better  than  April,  but  June  is  best  of  all.  Then 
the  days  are  hot,  but  not  too  hot,  and  the  nights  are  more  beau 
tiful  than  the  days.  Then  Venice  is  rosier  than  ever  in  the  morn 
ing  and  more  golden  than  ever  as  the  day  descends.  She  seems 
to  expand  and  evaporate,  to  multiply  all  her  reflections  and  iri 
descences.  Then  the  life  of  her  people  and  the  strangeness  of 
her  constitution  become  a  perpetual  comedy,  or  at  least  a  perpet 
ual  drama.  Then  the  gondola  is  your  sole  habitation,  and  you 
spend  days  between  sea  and  sky.  You  go  to  the  Lido,  though 
the  Lido  has  been  spoiled.  When  I  first  saw  it,  in  1869,  it  was  a 
very  natural  place,  and  there  was  but  a  rough  lane  across  the  little 
island  from  the  landing-place  to  the  beach.  There  was  a  bathing- 
place  in  those  days,  and  a  restaurant,  which  was  very  bad,  but 
where  in  the  warm  evenings  your  dinner  did  n't  much  matter  as 
you  sat  letting  it  cool  on  the  wooden  terrace  that  stretched  out 
into  the  sea.  To-day  the  Lido  is  a  part  of  united  Italy  and  has 
been  made  the  victim  of  villainous  improvements.  A  little  cock 
ney  village  has  sprung  up  on  its  rural  bosom  and  a  third-rate 
boulevard  leads  from  Santa  Elisabetta  to  the  Adriatic.  There 
are  bitumen  walks  and  gas-lamps,  lodging-houses,  shops  and  a 
teatro  diurno.  The  bathing-establishment  is  bigger  than  before, 
and  the  restaurant  as  well ;  but  it  is  a  compensation  perhaps  that 
the  cuisine  is  no  better.  Such  as  it  is,  however,  you  won't  scorn 
occasionally  to  partake  o£  it  on  the  breezy  platform  under  which 

[37] 


ITALIAN  HOURS 

bathers  dart  and  splash,  and  which  looks  out  to  where  the  fishing- 
boats,  with  sails  of  orange  and  crimson,  wander  along  the  darken 
ing  horizon.  The  beach  at  the  Lido  is  still  lonely  and  beautiful, 
and  you  can  easily  walk  away  from  the  cockney  village.  The 
return  to  Venice  in  the  sunset  is  classical  and  indispensable, 
and  those  who  at  that  glowing  hour  have  floated  toward  the 
towers  that  rise  out  of  the  lagoon  will  not  easily  part  with  the 
impression.  But  you  indulge  in  larger  excursions — you  go  to 
Burano  and  Torcello,  to  Malamocco  and  Chioggia.  Torcello, 
like  the  Lido,  has  been  improved;  the  deeply  interesting  little 
cathedral  of  the  eighth  century,  which  stood  there  on  the  edge 
of  the  sea,  as  touching  in  its  ruin,  with  its  grassy  threshold  and 
its  primitive  mosaics,  as  the  bleached  bones  of  a  human  skele 
ton  washed  ashore  by  the  tide,  has  now  been  restored  and  made 
cheerful,  and  the  charm  of  the  place,  its  strange  and  suggestive 
desolation,  has  well-nigh  departed. 

It  will  still  serve  you  as  a  pretext,  however,  for  a  day  on  the 
lagoon,  especially  as  you  will  disembark  at  Burano  and  admire 
the  wonderful  fisher-folk,  whose  good  looks  —  and  bad  manners, 
I  am  sorry  to  say  —  can  scarcely  be  exaggerated.  Burano  is 
celebrated  for  the  beauty  of  its  women  and  the  rapacity  of  its 
children,  and  it  is  a  fact  that  though  some  of  the  ladies  are  rather 
bold  about  it  every  one  of  them  shows  you  a  handsome  face. 
The  children  assail  you  for  coppers,  and  in  their  desire  to  be 
satisfied  pursue  your  gondola  into  the  sea.  Chioggia  is  a  larger 
Burano,  and  you  carry  away  from  either  place  a  half-sad,  half- 
cynical,  but  altogether  pictorial  impression;  the  impression  of 

[38] 


VENICE 

bright-coloured  hovels,  of  bathing  in  stagnant  canals,  of  young 
girls  with  faces  of  a  delicate  shape  and  a  susceptible  expres 
sion,  with  splendid  heads  of  hair  and  complexions  smeared  with 
powder,  faded  yellow  shawls  that  hang  like  old  Greek  draperies, 
and  little  wooden  shoes  that  click  as  they  go  up  and  down  the 
steps  of  the  convex  bridges ;  of  brown-cheeked  matrons  with  lus 
trous  tresses  and  high  tempers,  massive  throats  encased  with 
gold  beads,  and  eyes  that  meet  your  own  with  a  certain  tradi 
tional  defiance.  The  men  throughout  the  islands  of  Venice  are 
almost  as  handsome  as  the  women;  I  have  never  seen  so  many 
good-looking  rascals.  At  Burano  and  Chioggia  they  sit  mending 
their  nets,  or  lounge  at  the  street  corners,  where  conversation 
is  always  high-pitched,  or  clamour  to  you  to  take  a  boat;  and 
everywhere  they  decorate  the  scene  with  their  splendid  colour  - 
cheeks  and  throats  as  richly  brown  as  the  sails  of  their  fishing- 
smacks —  their  sea-faded  tatters  which  are  always  a  "costume," 
their  soft  Venetian  jargon,  and  the  gallantry  with  which  they 
wear  their  hats,  an  article  that  nowhere  sits  so  well  as  on  a  mass 
of  dense  Venetian  curls.  If  you  are  happy  you  will  find  yourself, 
after  a  June  day  in  Venice  (about  ten  o'clock),  on  a  balcony  that 
overhangs  the  Grand  Canal,  with  your  elbows  on  the  broad 
ledge,  a  cigarette  in  your  teeth  and  a  little  good  company  beside 
you.  The  gondolas  pass  beneath,  the  watery  surface  gleams  here 
and  there  from  their  lamps,  some  of  which  are  coloured  lan 
terns  that  move  mysteriously  in  the  darkness.  There  are  some 
evenings  in  June  when  there  are  too  many  gondolas,  too  many 
lanterns,  too  many  serenades  in  front  of  the  hotels.  The  sere- 

[39] 


ITALIAN  HOURS 

nading  in  particular  is  overdone;  but  on  such  a  balcony  as  I 
speak  of  you  need  n't  suffer  from  it,  for  in  the  apartment  behind 
you  —  an  accessible  refuge  —  there  is  more  good  company,  there 
are  more  cigarettes.  If  you  are  wise  you  will  step  back  there 
presently. 

1882. 


THE  GRAND  CANAL 


THE    GRAND    CANAL 

]HE  honour  of  representing  the  plan  and 
the  place  at  their  best  might  perhaps  ap 
pear,  in  the  City  of  St.  Mark,  properly 
to  belong  to  the  splendid  square  which 
bears  the  patron's  name  and  which  is  the 
centre  of  Venetian  life  so  far  (this  is  pretty 
well  all  the  way  indeed)  as  Venetian  life 
is  a  matter  of  strolling  and  chaffering,  of 
gossiping  and  gaping,  of  circulating  without  a  purpose,  and  of 
staring  —  too  often  with  a  foolish  one  —  through  the  shop-win 
dows  of  dealers  whose  hospitality  makes  their  doorsteps  dramatic, 
at  the  very  vulgarest  rubbish  in  all  the  modern  market.  If  the 
Grand  Canal,  however,  is  not  quite  technically  a  "street,"  the 
perverted  Piazza  is  perhaps  even  less  normal;  and  I  hasten  to 
add  that  I  am  glad  not  to  find  myself  studying  my  subject  under 
the  international  arcades,  or  yet  (I  will  go  the  length  of  saying) 
in  the  solemn  presence  of  the  church.  For  indeed  in  that  case 
I  foresee  I  should  become  still  more  confoundingly  conscious 
of  the  stumbling-block  that  inevitably,  even  with  his  first  few 
words,  crops  up  in  the  path  of  the  lover  of  Venice  who  rashly 
addresses  himself  to  expression.  "  Venetian  life  "  is  a  mere  lit 
erary  convention,  though  it  be  an  indispensable  figure.  The  words 

[43  ] 


ITALIAN  HOURS 

have  played  an  effective  part  in  the  literature  of  sensibility ;  they 
constituted  thirty  years  ago  the  title  of  Mr.  Howells's  delight 
ful  volume  of  impressions;  but  in  using  them  to-day  one  owes 
some  frank  amends  to  one's  own  lucidity.  Let  me  carefully 
premise  therefore  that  so  often  as  they  shall  again  drop  from 
my  pen,  so  often  shall  I  beg  to  be  regarded  as  systematically 
superficial. 

Venetian  life,  in  the  large  old  sense,  has  long  since  come  to  an 
end,  and  the  essential  present  character  of  the  most  melancholy 
of  cities  resides  simply  in  its  being  the  most  beautiful  of  tombs. 
Nowhere  else  has  the  past  been  laid  to  rest  with  such  tenderness, 
such  a  sadness  of  resignation  and  remembrance.  Nowhere  else  is 
the  present  so  alien,  so  discontinuous,  so  like  a  crowd  in  a  ceme 
tery  without  garlands  for  the  graves.  It  has  no  flowers  in  its 
hands,  but,  as  a  compensation  perhaps  —  and  the  thing  is  doubt 
less  more  to  the  point  —  it  has  money  and  little  red  books.  The 
everlasting  shuffle  of  these  irresponsible  visitors  in  the  Piazza 
is  contemporary  Venetian  life.  Everything  else  is  only  a  rever 
beration  of  that.  The  vast  mausoleum  has  a  turnstile  at  the 
door,  and  a  functionary  in  a  shabby  uniform  lets  you  in,  as  per 
tariff,  to  see  how  dead  it  is.  From  this  constatation,  this  cold 
curiosity,  proceed  all  the  industry,  the  prosperity,  the  vitality  of 
the  place.  The  shopkeepers  and  gondoliers,  the  beggars  and  the 
models,  depend  upon  it  for  a  living;  they  are  the  custodians  and 
the  ushers  of  the  great  museum  —  they  are  even  themselves  to  a 
certain  extent  the  objects  of  exhibition.  It  is  in  the  wide  vesti 
bule  of  the  square  that  the  polygot  pilgrims  gather  most  densely ; 

[44] 


THE  GRAND  CANAL 

Piazza  San  Marco  is  the  lobby  of  the  opera  in  the  intervals  of 
the  performance.  The  present  fortune  of  Venice,  the  lamentable 
difference,  is  most  easily  measured  there,  and  that  is  why,  in  the 
effort  to  resist  our  pessimism,  we  must  turn  away  both  from  the 
purchasers  and  from  the  vendors  of  ricordi.  The  ricordi  that 
we  prefer  are  gathered  best  where  the  gondola  glides  —  best  of 
all  on  the  noble  waterway  that  begins  in  its  glory  at  the  Salute 
and  ends  in  its  abasement  at  the  railway  station.  It  is,  however, 
the  cockneyfied  Piazzetta  (forgive  me,  shade  of  St.  Theodore  — 
has  not  a  brand  new  cafe  begun  to  glare  there,  electrically,  this 
very  year  ?)  that  introduces  us  most  directly  to  the  great  picture 
by  which  the  Grand  Canal  works  its  first  spell,  and  to  which 
a  thousand  artists,  not  always  with  a  talent  apiece,  have  paid  their 
tribute.  We  pass  into  the  Piazzetta  to  look  down  the  great  throat, 
as  it  were,  of  Venice,  and  the  vision  must  console  us  for  turning 
our  back  on  St.  Mark's. 

We  have  been  treated  to  it  again  and  again,  of  course,  even 
if  we  have  never  stirred  from  home;  but  that  is  only  a  reason 
the  more  for  catching  at  any  freshness  that  may  be  left  in  the 
world  of  photography.  It  is  in  Venice  above  all  that  we  hear  the 
small  buzz  of  this  vulgarising  voice  of  the  familiar ;  yet  perhaps 
it  is  in  Venice  too  that  the  picturesque  fact  has  best  mastered 
the  pious  secret  of  how  to  wait  for  us.  Even  the  classic  Salute 
waits  like  some  great  lady  on  the  threshold  of  her  saloon.  She 
is  more  ample  and  serene,  more  seated  at  her  door,  than  all  the 
copyists  have  told  us,  with  her  domes  and  scrolls,  her  scolloped 
buttresses  and  statues  forming  a  pompous  crown,  and  her  wide 

[45] 


ITALIAN  HOURS 

steps  disposed  on  the  ground  like  the  train  of  a  robe.  This  fine 
air  of  the  woman  of  the  world  is  carried  out  by  the  well-bred  as 
surance  with  which  she  looks  in  the  direction  of  her  old-fashioned 
Byzantine  neighbour ;  and  the  juxtaposition  of  two  churches  so 
distinguished  and  so  different,  each  splendid  in  its  sort,  is  a  suffi 
cient  mark  of  the  scale  and  range  of  Venice.  However,  we  our 
selves  are  looking  away  from  St.  Mark's  —  we  must  blind  our 
eyes  to  that  dazzle ;  without  it  indeed  there  are  brightnesses  and 
fascinations  enough.  We  see  them  in  abundance  even  while  we 
look  away  from  the  shady  steps  of  the  Salute.  These  steps  are 
cool  in  the  morning,  yet  I  don't  know  that  I  can  justify  my  ex 
cessive  fondness  for  them  any  better  than  I  can  explain  a  hun 
dred  of  the  other  vague  infatuations  with  which  Venice  sophisti 
cates  the  spirit.  Under  such  an  influence  fortunately  one  need  n't 
explain  —  it  keeps  account  of  nothing  but  perceptions  and  affec 
tions.  It  is  from  the  Salute  steps  perhaps,  of  a  summer  morning, 
that  this  view  of  the  open  mouth  of  the  city  is  most  brilliantly 
amusing.  The  whole  thing  composes  as  if  composition  were  the 
chief  end  of  human  institutions.  The  charming  architectural 
promontory  of  the  Dogana  stretches  out  the  most  graceful  of 
arms,  balancing  in  its  hand  the  gilded  globe  on  which  revolves 
the  delightful  satirical  figure  of  a  little  weathercock  of  a  woman. 
This  Fortune,  this  Navigation,  or  whatever  she  is  called  —  she 
surely  needs  no  name  —  catches  the  wind  in  the  bit  of  drapery 
of  which  she  has  divested  her  rotary  bronze  loveliness.  On  the 
other  side  of  the  Canal  twinkles  and  glitters  the  long  row  of  the 
happy  palaces  which  are  mainly  expensive  hotels.  There  is  a 

[46] 


THE  GRAND   CANAL 

little  of  everything  everywhere,  in  the  bright  Venetian  air,  but 
to  these  houses  belongs  especially  the  appearance  of  sitting, 
across  the  water,  at  the  receipt  of  custom,  of  watching  in  their 
hypocritical  loveliness  for  the  stranger  and  the  victim.  I  call 
them  happy,  because  even  their  sordid  uses  and  their  vulgar 
signs  melt  somehow,  with  their  vague  sea-stained  pinks  and 
drabs,  into  that  strange  gaiety  of  light  and  colour  which  is  made 
up  of  the  reflection  of  superannuated  things.  The  atmosphere 
plays  over  them  like  a  laugh,  they  are  of  the  essence  of  the  sad 
old  joke.  They  are  almost  as  charming  from  other  places  as  they 
are  from  their  own  balconies,  and  share  fully  in  that  universal 
privilege  of  Venetian  objects  which  consists  of  being  both  the 
picture  and  the  point  of  view. 

This  double  character,  which  is  particularly  strong  in  the 
Grand  Canal,  adds  a  difficulty  to  any  control  of  one's  notes. 
The  Grand  Canal  may  be  practically,  as  in  impression,  the 
cushioned  balcony  of  a  high  and  well-loved  palace  —  the  memory 
of  irresistible  evenings,  of  the  sociable  elbow,  of  endless  linger 
ing  and  looking ;  or  it  may  evoke  the  restlessness  of  a  fresh  curi 
osity,  of  methodical  inquiry,  in  a  gondola  piled  with  references. 
There  are  no  references,  I  ought  to  mention,  in  the  present  re 
marks,  which  sacrifice  to  accident,  not  to  completeness.  A  rhap 
sody  of  Venice  is  always  in  order,  but  I  think  the  catalogues 
are  finished.  I  should  not  attempt  to  write  here  the  names  of  all 
the  palaces,  even  if  the  number  of  those  I  find  myself  able  to 
remember  in  the  immense  array  were  less  insignificant.  There 
are  many  I  delight  in  that  I  don't  know,  or  at  least  don't  keep, 

[47] 


ITALIAN  HOURS 

apart.  Then  there  are  the  bad  reasons  for  preference  that  are 
better  than  the  good,  and  all  the  sweet  bribery  of  association 
and  recollection.  These  things,  as  one  stands  on  the  Salute  steps, 
are  so  many  delicate  fingers  to  pick  straight  out  of  the  row  a 
dear  little  featureless  house  which,  with  its  pale  green  shutters, 
looks  straight  across  at  the  great  door  and  through  the  very  key 
hole,  as  it  were,  of  the  church,  and  which  I  need  n't  call  by  a 
name  —  a  pleasant  American  name  —  that  every  one  in  Venice, 
these  many  years,  has  had  on  grateful  lips.  It  is  the  very  friend 
liest  house  in  all  the  wide  world,  and  it  has,  as  it  deserves  to  have, 
the  most  beautiful  position.  It  is  a  real  porto  di  mare,  as  the  gon 
doliers  say  —  a  port  within  a  port ;  it  sees  everything  that  comes 
and  goes,  and  takes  it  all  in  with  practised  eyes.  Not  a  tint  or  a 
hint  of  the  immense  iridescence  is  lost  upon  it,  and  there  are 
days  of  exquisite  colour  on  which  it  may  fancy  itself  the  heart 
of  the  wonderful  prism.  We  wave  to  it  from  the  Salute  steps, 
which  we  must  decidedly  leave  if  we  wish  to  get  on,  a  grateful 
hand  across  the  water,  and  turn  into  the  big  white  church 
of  Longhena — an  empty  shaft  beneath  a  perfunctory  dome  — 
where  an  American  family  and  a  German  party,  huddled  in  a 
corner  upon  a  pair  of  benches,  are  gazing,  with  a  conscientious 
ness  worthy  of  a  better  cause,  at  nothing  in  particular. 

For  there  is  nothing  particular  in  this  cold  and  conventional 
temple  to  gaze  at  save  the  great  Tintoretto  of  the  sacristy,  to 
which  we  quickly  pay  our  respects,  and  which  we  are  glad  to 
have  for  ten  minutes  to  ourselves.  The  picture,  though  full  of 
beauty,  is  not  the  finest  of  the  master's ;  but  it  serves  again  as 


THE  GRAND   CANAL 

well  as  another  to  transport  —  there  is  no  other  word — those  of 
his  lovers  for  whom,  in  far-away  days  when  Venice  was  an  early 
rapture,  this  strange  and  mystifying  painter  was  almost  the  su 
preme  revelation.  The  plastic  arts  may  have  less  to  say  to  us 
than  in  the  hungry  years  of  youth,  and  the  celebrated  picture  in 
general  be  more  of  a  blank;  but  more  than  the  others  any  fine 
Tintoret  still  carries  us  back,  calling  up  not  only  the  rich  par 
ticular  vision  but  the  freshness  of  the  old  wonder.  Many  things 
come  and  go,  but  this  great  artist  remains  for  us  in  Venice  a  part 
of  the  company  of  the  mind.  The  others  are  there  in  their 
obvious  glory,  but  he  is  the  only  one  for  whom  the  imagination, 
in  our  expressive  modern  phrase,  sits  up.  "The  Marriage  in 
Cana,"  at  the  Salute,  has  all  his  characteristic  and  fascinating 
unexpectedness  —  the  sacrifice  of  the  figure  of  our  Lord,  who  is 
reduced  to  the  mere  final  point  of  a  clever  perspective,  and  the 
free,  joyous  presentation  of  all  the  other  elements  of  the  feast. 
Why,  in  spite  of  this  queer  one-sidedness,  does  the  picture  give 
us  no  impression  of  a  lack  of  what  the  critics  call  reverence  ?  For 
no  other  reason  that  I  can  think  of  than  because  it  happens  to 
be  the  work  of  its  author,  in  whose  very  mistakes  there  is  a  sin 
gular  wisdom.  Mr.  Ruskin  has  spoken  with  sufficient  eloquence 
of  the  serious  loveliness  of  the  row  of  heads  of  the  women  on 
the  right,  who  talk  to  each  other  as  they  sit  at  the  foreshortened 
banquet.  There  could  be  no  better  example  of  the  roving  inde 
pendence  of  the  painter's  vision,  a  real  spirit  of  adventure  for 
which  his  subject  was  always  a  cluster  of  accidents;  not  an 
obvious  order,  but  a  sort  of  peopled  and  agitated  chapter  of  life, 

[49] 


ITALIAN  HOURS 

in  which  the  figures  are  submissive  pictorial  notes.  These  notes 
are  all  there  in  their  beauty  and  heterogeneity,  and  if  the  abun 
dance  is  of  a  kind  to  make  the  principle  of  selection  seem  in  com 
parison  timid,  yet  the  sense  of  "composition"  in  the  spectator 
—  if  it  happen  to  exist  —  reaches  out  to  the  painter  in  peculiar 
sympathy.  Dull  must  be  the  spirit  of  the  worker  tormented  in 
any  field  of  art  with  that  particular  question  who  is  not  moved 
to  recognise  in  the  eternal  problem  the  high  fellowship  of  Tin 
toretto. 

If  the  long  reach  from  this  point  to  the  deplorable  iron  bridge 
which  discharges  the  pedestrian  at  the  Academy  —  or,  more 
comprehensively,  to  the  painted  and  gilded  Gothic  of  the  noble 
Palazzo  Foscari  —  is  too  much  of  a  curve  to  be  seen  at  any  one 
point  as  a  whole,  it  represents  the  better  the  arched  neck,  as  it 
were,  of  the  undulating  serpent  of  which  the  Canalazzo  has  the 
likeness.  We  pass  a  dozen  historic  houses,  we  note  in  our  passage 
a  hundred  component  "bits,"  with  the  baffled  sketcher's  sense, 
and  with  what  would  doubtless  be,  save  for  our  intensely  Vene 
tian  fatalism,  the  baffled  sketcher's  temper.  It  is  the  early  pal 
aces,  of  course,  and  also,  to  be  fair,  some  of  the  late,  if  we  could 
take  them  one  by  one,  that  give  the  Canal  the  best  of  its  grand 
air.  The  fairest  are  often  cheek-by-jowl  with  the  foulest,  and  there 
are  few,  alas,  so  fair  as  to  have  been  completely  protected  by 
their  beauty.  The  ages  and  the  generations  have  worked  their 
will  on  them,  and  the  wind  and  the  weather  have  had  much  to 
say ;  but  disfigured  and  dishonoured  as  they  are,  with  the  bruises 
of  their  marbles  and  the  patience  of  their  ruin,  there  is  nothing 

[50] 


THE  GRAND  CANAL 

like  them  in  the  world,  and  the  long  succession  of  their  faded, 
conscious  faces  makes  of  the  quiet  waterway  they  overhang  a 
promenade  historique  of  which  the  lesson,  however  often  we  read 
it,  gives,  in  the  depth  of  its  interest,  an  incomparable  dignity  to 
Venice.  We  read  it  in  the  Romanesque  arches,  crooked  to-day 
in  their  very  curves,  of  the  early  middle-age,  in  the  exquisite 
individual  Gothic  of  the  splendid  time,  and  in  the  cornices  and 
columns  of  a  decadence  almost  as  proud.  These  things  at  pre 
sent  are  almost  equally  touching  in  their  good  faith;  they  have 
each  in  their  degree  so  effectually  parted  with  their  pride.  They 
have  lived  on  as  they  could  and  lasted  as  they  might,  and  we 
hold  them  to  no  account  of  their  infirmities,  for  even  those  of 
them  whose  blank  eyes  to-day  meet  criticism  with  most  sub 
mission  are  far  less  vulgar  than  the  uses  we  have  mainly  managed 
to  put  them  to.  We  have  botched  them  and  patched  them  and 
covered  them  with  sordid  signs ;  we  have  restored  and  improved 
them  with  a  merciless  taste,  and  the  best  of  them  we  have  made 
over  to  the  pedlars.  Some  of  the  most  striking  objects  in  the 
finest  vistas  at  present  are  the  huge  advertisements  of  the  curi 
osity-shops. 

The  antiquity-mongers  in  Venice  have  all  the  courage  of  their 
opinion,  and  it  is  easy  to  see  how  well  they  know  they  can  con 
found  you  with  an  unanswerable  question.  What  is  the  whole 
place  but  a  curiosity-shop,  and  what  are  you  here  for  yourself 
but  to  pick  up  odds  and  ends  ?  "  We  pick  them  up  for  you," 
say  these  honest  Jews,  whose  prices  are  marked  in  dollars,  "  and 
who  shall  blame  us  if,  the  flowers  being  pretty  well  plucked, 


ITALIAN  HOURS 

we  add  an  artificial  rose  or  two  to  the  composition  of  the  bou 
quet  ?"  They  take  care,  in  a  word,  that  there  be  plenty  of  relics, 
and  their  establishments  are  huge  and  active.  They  administer 
the  antidote  to  pedantry,  and  you  can  complain  of  them  only 
if  you  never  cross  their  thresholds.  If  you  take  this  step  you  are 
lost,  for  you  have  parted  with  the  correctness  of  your  attitude. 
Venice  becomes  frankly  from  such  a  moment  the  big  depressing 
dazzling  joke  in  which  after  all  our  sense  of  her  contradictions 
sinks  to  rest  —  the  grimace  of  an  over-strained  philosophy.  It 's 
rather  a  comfort,  for  the  curiosity-shops  are  amusing.  You  have 
bad  moments  indeed  as  you  stand  in  their  halls  of  humbug  and, 
in  the  intervals  of  haggling,  hear  through  the  high  windows  the 
soft  plash  of  the  sea  on  the  old  water-steps,  for  you  think  with 
anger  of  the  noble  homes  that  are  laid  waste  in  such  scenes,  of 
the  delicate  lives  that  must  have  been,  that  might  still  be,  led  there. 
You  reconstruct  the  admirable  house  according  to  your  own  needs; 
leaning  on  a  back  balcony,  you  drop  your  eyes  into  one  of  the 
little  green  gardens  with  which,  for  the  most  part,  such  estab 
lishments  are  exasperatingly  blessed,  and  end  by  feeling  it  a 
shame  that  you  yourself  are  not  in  possession.  (I  take  for  granted, 
of  course,  that  as  you  go  and  come  you  are,  in  imagination, 
perpetually  lodging  yourself  and  setting  up  your  gods;  for  if 
this  innocent  pastime,  this  borrowing  of  the  mind,  be  not  your 
favourite  sport  there  is  a  flaw  in  the  appeal  that  Venice  makes 
to  you.)  There  may  be  happy  cases  in  which  your  envy  is  tem 
pered,  or  perhaps  I  should  rather  say  intensified,  by  real  par 
ticipation.  If  you  have  had  the  good  fortune  to  enjoy  the  hos- 

[52] 


THE  GRAND   CANAL 

pitality  of  an  old  Venetian  home  and  to  lead  your  life  a  little  in 
the  painted  chambers  that  still  echo  with  one  of  the  historic 
names,  you  have  entered  by  the  shortest  step  into  the  inner  spirit 
of  the  place.  If  it  did  n't  savour  of  treachery  to  private  kindness 
I  should  like  to  speak  frankly  of  one  of  these  delightful,  even 
though  alienated,  structures,  to  refer  to  it  as  a  splendid  example 
of  the  old  palatial  type.  But  I  can  only  do  so  in  passing,  with 
a  hundred  precautions,  and,  lifting  the  curtain  at  the  edge, 
drop  a  commemorative  word  on  the  success  with  which,  in  this 
particularly  happy  instance,  the  cosmopolite  habit,  the  modern 
sympathy,  the  intelligent,  flexible  attitude,  the  latest  fruit  of  time, 
adjust  themselves  to  the  great  gilded,  relinquished  shell  and  try 
to  fill  it  out.  A  Venetian  palace  that  has  not  too  grossly  suffered 
and  that  is  not  overwhelming  by  its  mass  makes  almost  any 
life  graceful  that  may  be  led  in  it.  With  cultivated  and  gener 
ous  contemporary  ways  it  reveals  a  pre-established  harmony. 
As  you  live  in  it  day  after  day  its  beauty  and  its  interest  sink 
more  deeply  into  your  spirit ;  it  has  its  moods  and  its  hours  and 
its  mystic  voices  and  its  shifting  expressions.  If  in  the  absence 
of  its  masters  you  have  happened  to  have  it  to  yourself  for  twenty- 
four  hours  you  will  never  forget  the  charm  of  its  haunted  still 
ness,  late  on  the  summer  afternoon  for  instance,  when  the  call  of 
playing  children  comes  in  behind  from  the  campo,  nor  the  way 
the  old  ghosts  seemed  to  pass  on  tip-toe  on  the  marble  floors. 
It  gives  you  practically  the  essence  of  the  matter  that  we  are 
considering,  for  beneath  the  high  balconies  Venice  comes  and 
goes,  and  the  particular  stretch  you  command  contains  all  the 

[53] 


ITALIAN  HOURS 

characteristics.  Everything  has  its  turn,  from  the  heavy  barges 
of  merchandise,  pushed  by  long  poles  and  the  patient  shoulder, 
to  the  floating  pavilions  of  the  great  serenades,  and  you  may 
study  at  your  leisure  the  admirable  Venetian  arts  of  managing 
a  boat  and  organising  a  spectacle.  Of  the  beautiful  free  stroke 
with  which  the  gondola,  especially  when  there  are  two  oars,  is 
impelled,  you  never,  in  the  Venetian  scene,  grow  weary;  it  is 
always  in  the  picture,  and  the  large  profiled  action  that  lets  the 
standing  rowers  throw  themselves  forward  to  a  constant  recov 
ery  has  the  double  value  of  being,  at  the  fag-end  of  greatness, 
the  only  energetic  note.  The  people  from  the  hotels  are  always 
afloat,  and,  at  the  hotel  pace,  the  solitary  gondolier  (like  the  sol 
itary  horseman  of  the  old-fashioned  novel)  is,  I  confess,  a  some 
what  melancholy  figure.  Perched  on  his  poop  without  a  mate,  he 
re-enacts  perpetually,  in  high  relief,  with  his  toes  turned  out, 
the  comedy  of  his  odd  and  charming  movement.  He  always  has 
a  little  the  look  of  an  absent-minded  nursery-maid  pushing  her 
small  charges  in  a  perambulator. 

But  why  should  I  risk  too  free  a  comparison,  where  this 
picturesque  and  amiable  class  are  concerned  ?  I  delight  in  their 
sun-burnt  complexions  and  their  childish  dialect;  I  know  them 
only  by  their  merits,  and  I  am  grossly  prejudiced  in  their  favour. 
They  are  interesting  and  touching,  and  alike  in  their  virtues 
and  their  defects  human  nature  is  simplified  as  with  a  big  effect 
ive  brush.  Affecting  above  all  is  their  dependence  on  the  stranger, 
the  whimsical  stranger  who  swims  out  of  their  ken,  yet  whom 
Providence  sometimes  restores.  The  best  of  them  at  any  rate 

[54] 


THE  GRAND  CANAL 

are  in  their  line  great  artists.  On  the  swarming  feast-days,  on 
the  strange  feast-night  of  the  Redentore,  their  steering  is  a 
miracle  of  ease.  The  master-hands,  the  celebrities  and  winners 
of  prizes  —  you  may  see  them  on  the  private  gondolas  in  spotless 
white,  with  brilliant  sashes  and  ribbons,  and  often  with  very 
handsome  persons  —  take  the  right  of  way  with  a  pardonable 
insojence.  They  penetrate  the  crush  of  boats  with  an  authority 
of  their  own.  The  crush  of  boats,  the  universal  sociable  bumping 
and  squeezing,  is  great  when,  on  the  summer  nights,  the  ladies 
shriek  with  alarm,  the  city  pays  the  fiddlers,  and  the  illuminated 
barges,  scattering  music  and  song,  lead  a  long  train  down  the 
Canal.  The  barges  used  to  be  rowed  in  rhythmic  strokes,  but 
now  they  are  towed  by  the  steamer.  The  coloured  lamps,  the 
vocalists  before  the  hotels,  are  not  to  my  sense  the  greatest 
seduction  of  Venice ;  but  it  would  be  an  uncandid  sketch  of  the 
Canalazzo  that  should  n't  touch  them  with  indulgence.  Taking 
one  nuisance  with  another,  they  are  probably  the  prettiest  in 
the  world,  and  if  they  have  in  general  more  magic  for  the  new 
arrival  than  for  the  old  Venice-lover,  they  in  any  case,  at  their 
best,  keep  up  the  immemorial  tradition.  The  Venetians  have 
had  from  the  beginning  of  time  the  pride  of  their  processions 
and  spectacles,  and  it 's  a  wonder  how  with  empty  pockets  they 
still  make  a  clever  show.  The  Carnival  is  dead,  but  these  are 
the  scraps  of  its  inheritance.  Vauxhall  on  the  water  is  of  course 
more  Vauxhall  than  ever,  with  the  good  fortune  of  home-made 
music  and  of  a  mirror  that  reduplicates  and  multiplies.  The  feast 
of  the  Redeemer  —  the  great  popular  feast  of  the  year  —  is  a 

[55] 


ITALIAN  HOURS 

wonderful  Venetian  Vauxhall.  All  Venice  on  this  occasion  takes  to 
the  boats  for  the  night  and  loads  them  with  lamps  and  provisions. 
Wedged  together  in  a  mass  it  sups  and  sings;  every  boat  is  a 
floating  arbour,  a  private  cafe-concert.  Of  all  Christian  com 
memorations  it  is  the  most  ingenuously  and  harmlessly  pagan. 
Toward  morning  the  passengers  repair  to  the  Lido,  where,  as 
the  sun  rises,  they  plunge,  still  sociably,  into  the  sea.  The  night 
of  the  Redentore  has  been  described,  but  it  would  be  interest 
ing  to  have  an  account,  from  the  domestic  point  of  view,  of  its 
usual  morrow.  It  is  mainly  an  affair  of  the  Giudecca,  however, 
which  is  bridged  over  from  the  Zattere  to  the  great  church. 
The  pontoons  are  laid  together  during  the  day  —  it  is  all  done 
with  extraordinary  celerity  and  art  —  and  the  bridge  is  pro 
longed  across  the  Canalazzo  (to  Santa  Maria  Zobenigo),  which 
is  my  only  warrant  for  glancing  at  the  occasion.  We  glance  at 
it  from  our  palace  windows;  lengthening  our  necks  a  little,  as 
we  look  up  toward  the  Salute,  we  see  all  Venice,  on  the  July 
afternoon,  so  serried  as  to  move  slowly,  pour  across  the  tem 
porary  footway.  It  is  a  flock  of  very  good  children,  and  the 
bridged  Canal  is  their  toy.  All  Venice  on  such  occasions  is 
gentle  and  friendly;  not  even  all  Venice  pushes  any  one  into 
the  water. 

But  from  the  same  high  windows  we  catch  without  any  stretch 
ing  of  the  neck  a  still  more  indispensable  note  in  the  picture, 
a  famous  pretender  eating  the  bread  of  bitterness.  This  repast 
is  served  in  the  open  air,  on  a  neat  little  terrace,  by  attendants 
in  livery,  and  there  is  no  indiscretion  in  our  seeing  that  the 

[56] 


THE  GRAND  CANAL 

pretender  dines.  Ever  since  the  table  d'hote  in  "Candide"  Ven 
ice  has  been  the  refuge  of  monarchs  in  want  of  thrones  —  she 
wouldn't  know  herself  without  her  rois  en  exit.  The  exile  is 
agreeable  and  soothing,  the  gondola  lets  them  down  gently. 
Its  movement  is  an  anodyne,  its  silence  a  philtre,  and  little  by 
little  it  rocks  all  ambitions  to  sleep.  The  prescript  has  plenty 
of  leisure  to  write  his  proclamations  and  even  his  memoirs, 
and  I  believe  he  has  organs  in  which  they  are  published;  but 
the  only  noise  he  makes  in  the  world  is  the  harmless  splash  of 
his  oars.  He  comes  and  goes  along  the  Canalazzo,  and  he  might 
be  much  worse  employed.  He  is  but  one  of  the  interesting 
objects  it  presents,  however,  and  I  am  by  no  means  sure  that  he 
is  the  most  striking.  He  has  a  rival,  if  not  in  the  iron  bridge, 
which,  alas,  is  within  our  range,  at  least — to  take  an  immedi 
ate  example  —  in  the  Montecuculi  Palace.  Far-descended  and 
weary,  but  beautiful  in  its  crooked  old  age,  with  its  lovely  pro 
portions,  its  delicate  round  arches,  its  carvings  and  its  disks  of 
marble,  is  the  haunted  Montecuculi.  Those  who  have  a  kind 
ness  for  Venetian  gossip  like  to  remember  that  it  was  once  for 
a  few  months  the  property  of  Robert  Browning,  who,  however, 
never  lived  in  it,  and  who  died  in  the  splendid  Rezzonico,  the 
residence  of  his  son  and  a  wonderful  cosmopolite  ''document," 
which,  as  it  presents  itself,  in  an  admirable  position,  but  a  short 
way  farther  down  the  Canal,  we  can  almost  see,  in  spite  of  the 
curve,  from  the  window  at  which  we  stand.  This  great  seven 
teenth  century  pile,  throwing  itself  upon  the  water  with  a  peculiar 
florid  assurance,  a  certain  upward  toss  of  its  cornice  which  gives 

[57] 


ITALIAN  HOURS 

it  the  air  of  a  rearing  sea-horse,  decorates  immensely  —  and 
within,  as  well  as  without  —  the  wide  angle  that  it  commands. 

There  is  a  more  formal  greatness  in  the  high  square  Gothic 
Foscari,  just  below  it,  one  of  the  noblest  creations  of  the  fifteenth 
century,  a  masterpiece  of  symmetry  and  majesty.  Dedicated 
to-day  to  official  uses  —  it  is  the  property  of  the  State  —  it  looks 
conscious  of  the  consideration  it  enjoys,  and  is  one  of  the  few 
great  houses  within  our  range  whose  old  age  strikes  us  as  robust 
and  painless.  It  is  visibly  "kept  up";  perhaps  it  is  kept  up  too 
much;  perhaps  I  am  wrong  in  thinking  so  well  of  it.  These 
doubts  and  fears  course  rapidly  through  my  mind  —  I  am  easily 
their  victim  when  it  is  a  question  of  architecture  —  as  they  are 
apt  to  do  to-day,  in  Italy,  almost  anywhere,  in  the  presence  of 
the  beautiful,  of  the  desecrated  or  the  neglected.  We  feel  at 
such  moments  as  if  the  eye  of  Mr.  Ruskin  were  upon  us;  we 
grow  nervous  and  lose  our  confidence.  This  makes  me  inevitably, 
in  talking  of  Venice,  seek  a  pusillanimous  safety  in  the  trivial 
and  the  obvious.  I  am  on  firm  ground  in  rejoicing  in  the  little 
garden  directly  opposite  our  windows — it  is  another  proof  that 
they  really  show  us  everything  —  and  in  feeling  that  the  gardens 
of  Venice  would  deserve  a  page  to  themselves.  They  are  infi 
nitely  more  numerous  than  the  arriving  stranger  can  suppose ; 
they  nestle  with  a  charm  all  their  own  in  the  complications  of 
most  back-views.  Some  of  them  are  exquisite,  many  are  large, 
and  even  the  scrappiest  have  an  artful  understanding,  in  the 
interest  of  colour,  with  the  waterways  that  edge  their  foundations. 
On  the  small  canals,  in  the  hunt  for  amusement,  they  are  the 

[58  ] 


THE  GRAND  CANAL 

prettiest  surprises  of  all.  The  tangle  of  plants  and  flowers  crowds 
over  the  battered  walls,  the  greenness  makes  an  arrangement 
with  the  rosy  sordid  brick.  Of  all  the  reflected  and  liquefied 
things  in  Venice,  and  the  number  of  these  is  countless,  I  think 
the  lapping  water  loves  them  most.  They  are  numerous  on  the 
Canalazzo,  but  wherever  they  occur  they  give  a  brush  to  the 
picture  and  in  particular,  it  is  easy  to  guess,  give  a  sweetness  to 
the  house.  Then  the  elements  are  complete  —  the  trio  of  air 
and  water  and  of  things  that  grow.  Venice  without  them  would 
be  too  much  a  matter  of  the  tides  and  the  stones.  Even  the  little 
trellises  of  the  traghetti  count  charmingly  as  reminders,  amid  so 
much  artifice,  of  the  woodland  nature  of  man.  The  vine-leaves, 
trained  on  horizontal  poles,  make  a  roof  of  chequered  shade  for 
the  gondoliers  and  ferrymen,  who  doze  there  according  to  oppor 
tunity,  or  chatter  or  hail  the  approaching  "fare."  There  is  no 
"hum"  in  Venice,  so  that  their  voices  travel  far;  they  enter  your 
windows  and  mingle  even  with  your  dreams.  I  beg  the  reader 
to  believe  that  if  I  had  time  to  go  into  everything,  I  would  go 
into  the  traghetti,  which  have  their  manners  and  their  morals, 
and  which  used  to  have  their  piety.  This  piety  was  always  a 
madonnina,  the  protectress  of  the  passage  —  a  quaint  figure  of 
the  Virgin  with  the  red  spark  of  a  lamp  at  her  feet.  The  lamps 
appear  for  the  most  part  to  have  gone  out,  and  the  images  doubt 
less  have  been  sold  for  bric-a-brac.  The  ferrymen,  for  aught  I 
know,  are  converted  to  Nihilism  —  a  faith  consistent  happily 
with  a  good  stroke  of  business.  One  of  the  figures  has  been  left, 
however  —  the  Madonnetta  which  gives  its  name  to  a  traghetto 

[59] 


ITALIAN  HOURS 

near  the  Rialto.  But  this  sweet  survivor  is  a  carven  stone  inserted 
ages  ago  in  the  corner  of  an  old  palace  and  doubtless  difficult 
of  removal.  Pazienza,  the  day  will  come  when  so  marketable 
a  relic  will  also  be  extracted  from  its  socket  and  purchased  by 
the  devouring  American.  I  leave  that  expression,  on  second 
thought,  standing;  but  I  repent  of  it  when  I  remember  that  it 
is  a  devouring  American  —  a  lady  long  resident  in  Venice  and 
whose  kindnesses  all  Venetians,  as  well  as  her  country-people, 
know,  who  has  rekindled  some  of  the  extinguished  tapers, 
setting  up  especially  the  big  brave  Gothic  shrine,  of  painted  and 
gilded  wood,  which,  on  the  top  of  its  stout  palo,  sheds  its  influence 
on  the  place  of  passage  opposite  the  Salute. 

If  I  may  not  go  into  those  of  the  palaces  this  devious  discourse 
has  left  behind,  much  less  may  I  enter  the  great  galleries  of  the 
Academy,  which  rears  its  blank  wall,  surmounted  by  the  lion  of 
St.  Mark,  well  within  sight  of  the  windows  at  which  we  are  still 
lingering.  This  wondrous  temple  of  Venetian  art  —  for  all  it 
promises  little  from  without  —  overhangs,  in  a  manner,  the  Grand 
Canal,  but  if  we  were  so  much  as  to  cross  its  threshold  we  should 
wander  beyond  recall.  It  contains,  in  some  of  the  most  magni 
ficent  halls  —  where  the  ceilings  have  all  the  glory  with  which 
the  imagination  of  Venice  alone  could  over-arch  a  room  —  some 
of  the  noblest  pictures  in  the  world ;  and  whether  or  not  we  go 
back  to  them  on  any  particular  occasion  for  another  look,  it  is 
always  a  comfort  to  know  that  they  are  there,  as  the  sense  of  them 
on  the  spot  is  a  part  of  the  furniture  of  the  mind  —  the  sense  of 
them  close  at  hand,  behind  every  wall  and  under  every  cover, 

[60] 


THE   GRAND   CANAL 

like  the  inevitable  reverse  of  a  medal,  of  the  side  exposed  to  the 
air  that  reflects,  intensifies,  completes  the  scene.  In  other  words, 
as  it  was  the  inevitable  destiny  of  Venice  to  be  painted,  and 
painted  with  passion,  so  the  wide  world  of  picture  becomes,  as 
we  live  there,  and  however  much  we  go  about  our  affairs,  the 
constant  habitation  of  our  thoughts.  The  truth  is,  we  are  in  it 
so  uninterruptedly,  at  home  and  abroad,  that  there  is  scarcely 
a  pressure  upon  us  to  seek  it  in  one  place  more  than  in  another. 
Choose  your  standpoint  at  random  and  trust  the  picture  to  come 
to  you.  This  is  manifestly  why  I  have  not,  I  find  myself  con 
scious,  said  more  about  the  features  of  the  Canalazzo  which  oc 
cupy  the  reach  between  the  Salute  and  the  position  we  have  so 
obstinately  taken  up.  It  is  still  there  before  us,  however,  and  the 
delightful  little  Palazzo  Dario,  intimately  familiar  to  English 
and  American  travellers,  picks  itself  out  in  the  foreshortened 
brightness.  The  Dario  is  covered  with  the  loveliest  little  marble 
plates  and  sculptured  circles;  it  is  made  up  of  exquisite  pieces 
—  as  if  there  had  been  only  enough  to  make  it  small  —  so  that 
it  looks,  in  its  extreme  antiquity,  a  good  deal  like  a  house  of  cards 
that  hold  together  by  a  tenure  it  would  be  fatal  to  touch.  An  old 
Venetian  house  dies  hard  indeed,  and  I  should  add  that  this  deli 
cate  thing,  with  submission  in  every  feature,  continues  to  resist 
the  contact  of  generations  of  lodgers.  It  is  let  out  in  floors  (it 
used  to  be  let  as  a  whole)  and  in  how  many  eager  hands — for  it 
is  in  great  requisition  —  under  how  many  fleeting  dispensations 
have  we  not  known  and  loved  it  ?  People  are  always  writing  in 
advance  to  secure  it,  as  they  are  to  secure  the  Jenkins's  gon- 

[61] 


ITALIAN  HOURS 

dolier,  and  as  the  gondola  passes  we  see  strange  faces  at  the 
windows  —  though  it's  ten  to  one  we  recognise  them — and  the 
millionth  artist  coming  forth  with  his  traps  at  the  water-gate. 
The  poor  little  patient  Dario  is  one  of  the  most  flourishing  booths 
at  the  fair. 

The  faces  at  the  window  look  out  at  the  great  Sansovino  — 
the  splendid  pile  that  is  now  occupied  by  the  Prefect.  I  feel 
decidedly  that  I  don't  object  as  I  ought  to  the  palaces  of  the  six 
teenth  and  seventeenth  centuries.  Their  pretensions  impose  upon 
me,  and  the  imagination  peoples  them  more  freely  than  it  can 
people  the  interiors  of  the  prime.  Was  not  moreover  this  master 
piece  of  Sansovino  once  occupied  by  the  Venetian  post-office,  and 
thereby  intimately  connected  with  an  ineffaceable  first  impres 
sion  of  the  author  of  these  remarks  ?  He  had  arrived,  wonder 
ing,  palpitating,  twenty-three  years  ago,  after  nightfall,  and,  the 
first  thing  on  the  morrow,  had  repaired  to  the  post-office  for  his 
letters.  They  had  been  waiting  a  long  time  and  were  full  of 
delayed  interest,  and  he  returned  with  them  to  the  gondola  and 
floated  slowly  down  the  Canal.  The  mixture,  the  rapture,  the 
wonderful  temple  of  the  paste  restante,  the  beautiful  strangeness, 
all  humanised  by  good  news  —  the  memory  of  this  abides  with 
him  still,  so  that  there  always  proceeds  from  the  splendid  water 
front  I  speak  of  a  certain  secret  appeal,  something  that  seems  to 
have  been  uttered  first  in  the  sonorous  chambers  of  youth.  Of 
course  this  association  falls  to  the  ground  —  or  rather  splashes 
into  the  water  —  if  I  am  the  victim  of  a  confusion.  Was  the 
edifice  in  question  twenty-three  years  ago  the  post-office,  which 

[62] 


THE  GRAND   CANAL 

has  occupied  since,  for  many  a  day,  very  much  humbler  quarters  ? 
I  am  afraid  to  take  the  proper  steps  for  finding  out,  lest  I  should 
learn  that  during  these  years  I  have  misdirected  my  emotion.  A 
better  reason  for  the  sentiment,  at  any  rate,  is  that  such  a  great 
house  has  surely,  in  the  high  beauty  of  its  tiers,  a  refinement  of 
its  own.  They  make  one  think  of  colosseums  and  aqueducts  and 
bridges,  and  they  constitute  doubtless,  in  Venice,  the  most  par 
donable  specimen  of  the  imitative.  I  have  even  a  timid  kindness 
for  the  huge  Pesaro,  far  down  the  Canal,  whose  main  reproach, 
more  even  than  the  coarseness  of  its  forms,  is  its  swaggering  size, 
its  want  of  consideration  for  the  general  picture,  which  the  early 
examples  so  reverently  respect.  The  Pesaro  is  as  far  out  of  the 
frame  as  a  modern  hotel,  and  the  Cornaro,  close  to  it,  oversteps 
almost  equally  the  modesty  of  art.  One  more  thing  they  and 
their  kindred  do,  I  must  add,  for  which,  unfortunately,  we  can 
patronise  them  less.  They  make  even  the  most  elaborate  mate 
rial  civilisation  of  the  present  day  seem  woefully  shrunken  and 
bourgeois,  for  they  simply  —  I  allude  to  the  biggest  palaces  - 
can't  be  lived  in  as  they  were  intended  to  be.  The  modern  tenant 
may  take  in  all  the  magazines,  but  he  bends  not  the  bow  of 
Achilles.  He  occupies  the  place,  but  he  does  n't  fill  it,  and  he 
has  guests  from  the  neighbouring  inns  with  ulsters  and  Baede 
kers.  We  are  far  at  the  Pesaro,  by  the  way,  from  our  attaching 
window,  and  we  take  advantage  of  it  to  go  in  rather  a  melan 
choly  mood  to  the  end.  The  long  straight  vista  from  the  Fos- 
cari  to  the  Rialto,  the  great  middle  stretch  of  the  Canal,  contains, 
as  the  phrase  is,  a  hundred  objects  of  interest,  but  it  contains 


ITALIAN   HOURS 

most  the  bright  oddity  of  its  general  Deluge  air.  In  all  these  cen 
turies  it  has  never  got  over  its  resemblance  to  a  flooded  city;  for 
some  reason  or  other  it  is  the  only  part  of  Venice  in  which  the 
houses  look  as  if  the  waters  had  overtaken  them.  Everywhere 
else  they  reckon  with  them  —  have  chosen  them ;  here  alone  the 
lapping  seaway  seems  to  confess  itself  an  accident. 

There  are  persons  who  hold  this  long,  gay,  shabby,  spotty 
perspective,  in  which,  with  its  immense  field  of  confused  reflec 
tion,  the  houses  have  infinite  variety,  the  dullest  expanse  in  Ven 
ice.  It  was  not  dull,  we  imagine,  for  Lord  Byron,  who  lived  in 
the  midmost  of  the  three  Mocenigo  palaces,  where  the  writing- 
table  is  still  shown  at  which  he  gave  the  rein  to  his  passions. 
For  other  observers  it  is  sufficiently  enlivened  by  so  delightful  a 
creation  as  the  Palazzo  Loredan,  once  a  masterpiece  and  at  present 
the  Municipio,  not  to  speak  of  a  variety  of  other  immemorial 
bits  whose  beauty  still  has  a  degree  of  freshness.  Some  of  the 
most  touching  relics  of  early  Venice  are  here  —  for  it  was  here 
she  precariously  clustered  —  peeping  out  of  a  submersion  more 
pitiless  than  the  sea.  As  we  approach  the  Rialto  indeed  the  pic 
ture  falls  off  and  a  comparative  commonness  suffuses  it.  There 
is  a  wide  paved  walk  on  either  side  of  the  Canal,  on  which  the 
waterman  —  and  who  in  Venice  is  not  a  waterman  ?  —  is  prone 
to  seek  repose.  I  speak  of  the  summer  days  —  it  is  the  sum 
mer  Venice  that  is  the  visible  Venice.  The  big  tarry  barges  are 
drawn  up  at  the  fondamenta,  and  the  bare-legged  boatmen,  in 
faded  blue  cotton,  lie  asleep  on  the  hot  stones.  If  there  were 
no  colour  anywhere  else  there  would  be  enough  in  their  tanned 


PALA//0     MOXt-KNUK).     VKXICK. 


THE  GRAND   CANAL 

personalities.  Half  the  low  doorways  open  into  the  warm  interior 
of  waterside  drinking-shops,  and  here  and  there,  on  the  quay, 
beneath  the  bush  that  overhangs  the  door,  there  are  rickety  tables 
and  chairs.  Where  in  Venice  is  there  not  the  amusement  of 
character  and  of  detail  ?  The  tone  in  this  part  is  very  vivid,  and 
is  largely  that  of  the  brown  plebeian  faces  looking  out  of  the 
patchy  miscellaneous  houses  —  the  faces  of  fat  undressed  women 
and  of  other  simple  folk  who  are  not  aware  that  they  enjoy,  from 
balconies  once  doubtless  patrician,  a  view  the  knowing  ones  of 
the  earth  come  thousands  of  miles  to  envy  them.  The  effect  is 
enhanced  by  the  tattered  clothes  hung  to  dry  in  the  windows, 
by  the  sun-faded  rags  that  flutter  from  the  polished  balustrades  — 
these  are  ivory-smooth  with  time ;  and  the  whole  scene  profits  by 
the  general  law  that  renders  decadence  and  ruin  in  Venice  more 
brilliant  than  any  prosperity.  Decay  is  in  this  extraordinary  place 
golden  in  tint  and  misery  couleur  de  rose.  The  gondolas  of  the 
correct  people  are  unmitigated  sable,  but  the  poor  market-boats 
from  the  islands  are  kaleidoscopic. 

The  Bridge  of  the  Rialto  is  a  name  to  conjure  with,  but,  hon 
estly  speaking,  it  is  scarcely  the  gem  of  the  composition.  There 
are  of  course  two  ways  of  taking  it — from  the  water  or  from  the 
upper  passage,  where  its  small  shops  and  booths  abound  in  Vene 
tian  character ;  but  it  mainly  counts  as  a  feature  of  the  Canal  when 
seen  from  the  gondola  or  even  from  the  awful  vaporetto.  The 
great  curve  of  its  single  arch  is  much  to  be  commended,  espe 
cially  when,  coming  from  the  direction  of  the  railway-station,  you 
see  it  frame  with  its  sharp  compass-line  the  perfect  picture,  the 


ITALIAN  HOURS 

reach  of  the  Canal  on  the  other  side.  But  the  backs  of  the  little 
shops  make  from  the  water  a  graceless  collective  hump,  and 
the  inside  view  is  the  diverting  one.  The  big  arch  of  the  bridge 
—  like  the  arches  of  all  the  bridges  —  is  the  waterman's  friend 
in  wet  weather.  The  gondolas,  when  it  rains,  huddle  beside  the 
peopled  barges,  and  the  young  ladies  from  the  hotels,  vaguely 
fidgeting,  complain  of  the  communication  of  insect  life.  Here 
indeed  is  a  little  of  everything,  and  the  jewellers  of  this  cele 
brated  precinct  —  they  have  their  immemorial  row  —  make  al 
most  as  fine  a  show  as  the  fruiterers.  It  is  a  universal  market, 
and  a  fine  place  to  study  Venetian  types.  The  produce  of  the 
islands  is  discharged  there,  and  the  fishmongers  announce  their 
presence.  All  one's  senses  indeed  are  vigorously  attacked;  the 
whole  place  is  violently  hot  and  bright,  all  odorous  and  noisy. 
The  churning  of  the  screw  of  the  vaporetto  mingles  with  the  other 
sounds  —  not  indeed  that  this  offensive  note  is  confined  to  one 
part  of  the  Canal.  But  just  here  the  little  piers  of  the  resented 
steamer  are  particularly  near  together,  and  it  seems  somehow  to 
be  always  kicking  up  the  water.  As  we  go  further  down  we  see  it 
stopping  exactly  beneath  the  glorious  windows  of  the  Ca'  d'  Oro. 
It  has  chosen  its  position  well,  and  who  shall  gainsay  it  for  hav 
ing  put  itself  under  the  protection  of  the  most  romantic  facade 
in  Europe  ?  The  companionship  of  these  objects  is  a  symbol ;  it 
expresses  supremely  the  present  and  the  future  of  Venice.  Per 
fect,  in  its  prime,  was  the  marble  Ca'  d'  Oro,  with  the  noble  re 
cesses  of  its  loggie,  but  even  then  it  probably  never  "met  a  want," 
like  the  successful  vaporetto.  If,  however,  we  are  not  to  go  into 

[66] 


THE  GRAND   CANAL 

the  Museo  Civico  —  the  old  Museo  Correr,  which  rears  a  staring 
renovated  front  far  down  on  the  left,  near  the  station,  so  also  we 
must  keep  out  of  the  great  vexed  question  of  steam  on  the  Ca- 
nalazzo,  just  as  a  while  since  we  prudently  kept  out  of  the  Acca- 
demia.  These  are  expensive  and  complicated  excursions.  It  is 
obvious  that  if  the  vaporetti  have  contributed  to  the  ruin  of  the 
gondoliers,  already  hard  pressed  by  fate,  and  to  that  of  the  pal 
aces,  whose  foundations  their  waves  undermine,  and  that  if  they 
have  robbed  the  Grand  Canal  of  the  supreme  distinction  of  its 
tranquillity,  so  on  the  other  hand  they  have  placed  "  rapid  tran 
sit,  "  in  the  New  York  phrase,  in  everybody's  reach,  and  enabled 
everybody — save  indeed  those  who  would  n't  for  the  world  —  to 
rush  about  Venice  as  furiously  as  people  rush  about  New  York. 
The  suitability  of  this  consummation  need  n't  be  pointed  out. 

Even  we  ourselves,  in  the  irresistible  contagion,  are  going  so 
fast  now  that  we  have  only  time  to  note  in  how  clever  and  costly 
a  fashion  the  Museo  Civico,  the  old  Fondaco  dei  Turchi,  has 
been  reconstructed  and  restored.  It  is  a  glare  of  white  marble 
without,  and  a  series  of  showy  majestic  halls  within,  where  a 
thousand  curious  mementos  and  relics  of  old  Venice  are  gathered 
and  classified.  Of  its  miscellaneous  treasures  I  fear  I  may  per 
haps  frivolously  prefer  the  series  of  its  remarkable  living  Longhis, 
an  illustration  of  manners  more  copious  than  the  celebrated  Car- 
paccio,  the  two  ladies  with  their  little  animals  and  their  long 
sticks.  Wonderful  indeed  to-day  are  the  museums  of  Italy,  where 
the  renovations  and  the  belle  ordonnance  speak  of  funds  appar 
ently  unlimited,  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  the  numerous  custo- 


ITALIAN  HOURS 

dians  frankly  look  starved.  What  is  the  pecuniary  source  of  all 
this  civic  magnificence  — -  it  is  shown  in  a  hundred  other  ways  — 
and  how  do  the  Italian  cities  manage  to  acquit  themselves  of 
expenses  that  would  be  formidable  to  communities  richer  and 
doubtless  less  aesthetic  ?  Who  pays  the  bills  for  the  expressive 
statues  alone,  the  general  exuberance  of  sculpture,  with  which 
every  piazzetta  of  almost  every  village  is  patriotically  decorated  ? 
Let  us  not  seek  an  answer  to  the  puzzling  question,  but  observe 
instead  that  we  are  passing  the  mouth  of  the  populous  Canareggio, 
next  widest  of  the  waterways,  where  the  race  of  Shylock  abides, 
and  at  the  corner  of  which  the  big  colourless  church  of  San  Gere- 
mia  stands  gracefully  enough  on  guard.  The  Canareggio,  with 
its  wide  lateral  footways  and  humpbacked  bridges,  makes  on  the 
feast  of  St.  John  an  admirable  noisy,  tawdry  theatre  for  one  of 
the  prettiest  and  the  most  infantile  of  the  Venetian  processions. 
The  rest  of  the  course  is  a  reduced  magnificence,  in  spite  of 
interesting  bits,  of  the  battered  pomp  of  the  Pesaro  and  the 
Cornaro,  of  the  recurrent  memories  of  royalty  in  exile  which 
cluster  about  the  Palazzo  Vendramin  Calergi,  once  the  residence 
of  the  Comte  de  Chambord  and  still  that  of  his  half-brother,  in 
spite  too  of  the  big  Papadopoli  gardens,  opposite  the  station,  the 
largest  private  grounds  in  Venice,  but  of  which  Venice  in  general 
mainly  gets  the  benefit  in  the  usual  form  of  irrepressible  green 
ery  climbing  over  walls  and  nodding  at  water.  The  rococo  church 
of  the  Scalzi  is  here,  all  marble  and  malachite,  all  a  cold,  hard 
glitter  and  a  costly,  curly  ugliness,  and  here  too,  opposite,  on 
the  top  of  its  high  steps,  is  San  Simeone  Profeta,  I  won't  say 

[68  ] 


THE  GRAND   CANAL 

immortalised,  but  unblushingly  misrepresented,  by  the  perfidious 
Canaletto.  I  shall  not  stay  to  unravel  the  mystery  of  this  pro 
saic  painter's  malpractices ;  he  falsified  without  fancy,  and  as  he 
apparently  transposed  at  will  the  objects  he  reproduced,  one  is 
never  sure  of  the  particular  view  that  may  have  constituted  his 
subject.  It  would  look  exactly  like  such  and  such  a  place  if  al 
most  everything  were  not  different.  San  Simeone  Prof  eta  appears 
to  hang  there  upon  the  wall ;  but  it  is  on  the  wrong  side  of  the 
Canal  and  the  other  elements  quite  fail  to  correspond.  One's  con 
fusion  is  the  greater  because  one  does  n't  know  that  everything 
may  not  really  have  changed,  even  beyond  all  probability  - 
though  it 's  only  in  America  that  churches  cross  the  street  or  the 
river  —  and  the  mixture  of  the  recognisable  and  the  different 
makes  the  ambiguity  maddening,  all  the  more  that  the  painter 
is  almost  as  attaching  as  he  is  bad.  Thanks  at  any  rate  to  the 
white  church,  domed  and  porticoed,  on  the  top  of  its  steps,  the 
traveller  emerging  for  the  first  time  upon  the  terrace  of  the  rail 
way-station  seems  to  have  a  Canaletto  before  him.  He  speedily 
discovers  indeed  even  in  the  presence  of  this  scene  of  the  final 
accents  of  the  Canalazzo  —  there  is  a  charm  in  the  old  pink 
warehouses  on  the  hot  fondamenta  —  that  he  has  something 
much  better.  He  looks  up  and  down  at  the  gathered  gondolas ; 
he  has  his  surprise  after  all,  his  little  first  Venetian  thrill ;  and 
as  the  terrace  of  the  station  ushers  in  these  things  we  shall  say 
no  harm  of  it,  though  it  is  not  lovely.  It  is  the  beginning  of  his 
experience,  but  it  is  the  end  of  the  Grand  Canal. 

1892. 


VENICE:    AN  EARLY   IMPRESSION 


VENICE:  AN  EARLY  IMPRESSION 

HERE  would  be  much  to  say  about  that 
golden  chain  of  historic  cities  which 
stretches  from  Milan  to  Venice,  in  which 
the  very  names  —  Brescia,  Verona,  Man 
tua,  Padua  —  are  an  ornament  to  one's 
phrase;  but  I  should  have  to  draw  upon 
recollections  now  three  years  old  and  to 
make  my  short  story  a  long  one.  Of  Ve 
rona  and  Venice  only  have  I  recent  impressions,  and  even  to 
these  must  I  do  hasty  justice.  I  came  into  Venice,  just  as  I  had 
done  before,  toward  the  end  of  a  summer's  day,  when  the  shad 
ows  begin  to  lengthen  and  the  light  to  glow,  and  found  that 
the  attendant  sensations  bore  repetition  remarkably  well.  There 
was  the  same  last  intolerable  delay  at  Mestre,  just  before  your 
first  glimpse  of  the  lagoon  confirms  the  already  distinct  sea-smell 
which  has  added  speed  to  the  precursive  flight  of  your  imagina 
tion;  then  the  liquid  level,  edged  afar  off  by  its  band  of  undis 
criminated  domes  and  spires,  soon  distinguished  and  proclaimed, 
however,  as  excited  and  contentious  heads  multiply  at  the  win 
dows  of  the  train ;  then  your  long  rumble  on  the  immense  white 
railway-bridge,  which,  in  spite  of  the  invidious  contrast  drawn, 
and  very  properly,  by  Mr.  Ruskin  between  the  old  and  the  new 

[73] 


ITALIAN   HOURS 

approach,  does  truly,  in  a  manner,  shine  across  the  green  lap  of 
the  lagoon  like  a  mighty  causeway  of  marble ;  then  the  plunge 
into  the  station,  which  would  be  exactly  similar  to  every  other 
plunge  save  for  one  little  fact  —  that  the  keynote  of  the  great 
medley  of  voices  borne  back  from  the  exit  is  not  "Cab,  sir!" 
but  "Barca,  signore!" 

I  do  not  mean,  however,  to  follow  the  traveller  through  every 
phase  of  his  initiation,  at  the  risk  of  stamping  poor  Venice  be 
yond  repair  as  the  supreme  bugbear  of  literature;  though  for 
my  own  part  I  hold  that  to  a  fine  healthy  romantic  appetite  the 
subject  can't  be  too  diffusely  treated.  Meeting  in  the  Piazza  on 
the  evening  of  my  arrival  a  young  American  painter  who  told 
me  that  he  had  been  spending  the  summer  just  where  I  found 
him,  I  could  have  assaulted  him  for  very  envy.  He  was  paint 
ing  forsooth  the  interior  of  St.  Mark's.  To  be  a  young  American 
painter  unperplexed  by  the  mocking,  elusive  soul  of  things  and 
satisfied  with  their  wholesome  light-bathed  surface  and  shape; 
keen  of  eye ;  fond  of  colour,  of  sea  and  sky  and  anything  that 
may  chance  between  them;  of  old  lace  and  old  brocade  and 
old  furniture  (even  when  made  to  order);  of  time-mellowed 
harmonies  on  nameless  canvases  and  happy  contours  in  cheap 
old  engravings;  to  spend  one's  mornings  in  still,  productive 
analysis  of  the  clustered  shadows  of  the  Basilica,  one's  after 
noons  anywhere,  in  church  or  campo,  on  canal  or  lagoon,  and 
one's  evenings  in  star-light  gossip  at  Florian's,  feeling  the  sea- 
breeze  throb  languidly  between  the  two  great  pillars  of  the 
Piazzetta  and  over  the  low  black  domes  of  the  church  —  this, 

[74] 


VENICE:  AN  EARLY  IMPRESSION 

I  consider,  is  to  be  as  happy  as  is  consistent  with  the  preserva 
tion  of  reason. 

The  mere  use  of  one's  eyes  in  Venice  is  happiness  enough, 
and  generous  observers  find  it  hard  to  keep  an  account  of  their 
profits  in  this  line.  Everything  the  attention  touches  holds  it, 
keeps  playing  with  it  —  thanks  to  some  inscrutable  flattery  of 
the  atmosphere.  Your  brown-skinned,  white-shirted  gondolier, 
twisting  himself  in  the  light,  seems  to  you,  as  you  lie  at  contem 
plation  beneath  your  awning,  a  perpetual  symbol  of  Venetian 
"effect."  The  light  here  is  in  fact  a  mighty  magician  and,  with 
all  respect  to  Titian,  Veronese  and  Tintoret,  the  greatest  artist 
of  them  all.  You  should  see  in  places  the  material  with  which  it 
deals  — slimy  brick,  marble  battered  and  befouled,  rags,  dirt, 
decay.  Sea  and  sky  seem  to  meet  half-way,  to  blend  their  tones 
into  a  soft  iridescence,  a  lustrous  compound  of  wave  and  cloud 
and  a  hundred  nameless  local  reflections,  and  then  to  fling  the 
clear  tissue  against  every  object  of  vision.  You  may  see  these 
elements  at  work  everywhere,  but  to  see  them  in  their  intensity 
you  should  choose  the  finest  day  in  the  month  and  have  your 
self  rowed  far  away  across  the  lagoon  to  Torcello.  Without 
making  this  excursion  you  can  hardly  pretend  to  know  Venice  or 
to  sympathise  with  that  longing  for  pure  radiance  which  ani 
mated  her  great  colourists.  It  is  a  perfect  bath  of  light,  and 
I  could  n't  get  rid  of  a  fancy  that  we  were  cleaving  the  upper 
atmosphere  on  some  hurrying  cloud-skiff.  At  Torcello  there  is 
nothing  but  the  light  to  see  —  nothing  at  least  but  a  sort  of  bloom 
ing  sand-bar  intersected  by  a  single  narrow  creek  which  does 

[75] 


ITALIAN   HOURS 

duty  as  a  canal  and  occupied  by  a  meagre  cluster  of  huts,  the 
dwellings  apparently  of  market -gardeners  and  fishermen,  and  by 
a  ruinous  church  of  the  eleventh  century.  It  is  impossible  to 
imagine  a  more  penetrating  case  of  unheeded  collapse.  Tor- 
cello  was  the  mother-city  of  Venice,  and  she  lies  there  now,  a 
mere  mouldering  vestige,  like  a  group  of  weather-bleached  pa 
rental  bones  left  impiously  unburied.  I  stopped  my  gondola  at 
the  mouth  of  the  shallow  inlet  and  walked  along  the  grass  beside 
a  hedge  to  the  low-browed,  crumbling  cathedral.  The  charm  of 
certain  vacant  grassy  spaces,  in  Italy,  overfrowned  by  masses 
of  brickwork  that  are  honeycombed  by  the  suns  of  centuries,  is 
something  that  I  hereby  renounce  once  for  all  the  attempt  to 
express;  but  you  may  be  sure  that  whenever  I  mention  such  a 
spot  enchantment  lurks  in  it. 

A  delicious  stillness  covered  the  little  campo  at  Torcello;  I 
remember  none  so  subtly  audible  save  that  of  the  Roman  Cam- 
pagna.  There  was  no  life  but  the  visible  tremor  of  the  brilliant 
air  and  the  cries  of  half-a-dozen  young  children  who  dogged  our 
steps  and  clamoured  for  coppers.  These  children,  by  the  way, 
were  the  handsomest  little  brats  in  the  world,  and  each  was  fur 
nished  with  a  pair  of  eyes  that  could  only  have  signified  the  pro 
test  of  nature  against  the  meanness  of  fortune.  They  were  very 
nearly  as  naked  as  savages,  and  their  little  bellies  protruded  like 
those  of  infant  cannibals  in  the  illustrations  of  books  of  travel ; 
but  as  they  scampered  and  sprawled  in  the  soft,  thick  grass,  grin 
ning  like  suddenly-translated  cherubs  and  showing  their  hungry 
little  teeth,  they  suggested  forcibly  that  the  best  assurance  of 

[76] 


VENICE:   AN   EARLY   IMPRESSION 

happiness  in  this  world  is  to  be  found  in  the  maximum  of  inno 
cence  and  the  minimum  of  wealth.  One  small  urchin  —  framed, 
if  ever  a  child  was,  to  be  the  joy  of  an  aristocratic  mamma  — 
was  the  most  expressively  beautiful  creature  I  had  ever  looked 
upon.  He  had  a  smile  to  make  Correggio  sigh  in  his  grave ;  and 
yet  here  he  was  running  wild  among  the  sea-stunted  bushes,  on 
the  lonely  margin  of  a  decaying  world,  in  prelude  to  how  blank 
or  to  how  dark  a  destiny  ?  Verily  nature  is  still  at  odds  with  pro 
priety;  though  indeed  if  they  ever  really  pull  together  I  fear  na 
ture  will  quite  lose  her  distinction.  An  infant  citizen  of  our  own 
republic,  straight-haired,  pale-eyed  and  freckled,  duly  darned 
and  catechised,  marching  into  a  New  England  schoolhouse,  is  an 
object  often  seen  and  soon  forgotten ;  but  I  think  I  shall  always 
remember  with  infinite  tender  conjecture,  as  the  years  roll  by, 
this  little  unlettered  Eros  of  the  Adriatic  strand.  Yet  all  youth 
ful  things  at  Torcello  were  not  cheerful,  for  the  poor  lad  who 
brought  us  the  key  of  the  cathedral  was  shaking  with  an  ague,  and 
his  melancholy  presence  seemed  to  point  the  moral  of  forsaken 
nave  and  choir.  The  church,  admirably  primitive  and  curious, 
reminded  me  of  the  two  or  three  oldest  churches  of  Rome  —  St. 
Clement  and  St.  Agnes.  The  interior  is  rich  in  grimly  mystical 
mosaics  of  the  twelfth  century  and  the  patchwork  of  precious 
fragments  in  the  pavement  not  inferior  to  that  of  St.  Mark's. 
But  the  terribly  distinct  Apostles  are  ranged  against  their  dead 
gold  backgrounds  as  stiffly  as  grenadiers  presenting  arms  —  in 
tensely  personal  sentinels  of  a  personal  Deity.  Their  stony  stare 
seems  to  wait  for  ever  vainly  for  some  visible  revival  of  primitive 

[77] 


ITALIAN  HOURS 

orthodoxy,  and  one  may  well  wonder  whether  it  finds  much 
beguilement  in  idly-gazing  troops  of  Western  heretics  —  pas 
sionless  even  in  their  heresy. 

I  had  been  curious  to  see  whether  in  the  galleries  and  temples 
of  Venice  I  should  be  disposed  to  transpose  my  old  estimates  — 
to  burn  what  I  had  adored  and  adore  what  I  had  burned.  It  is 
a  sad  truth  that  one  can  stand  in  the  Ducal  Palace  for  the  first 
time  but  once,  with  the  deliciously  ponderous  sense  of  that  par 
ticular  half-hour's  being  an  era  in  one's  mental  history;  but  I 
had  the  satisfaction  of  finding  at  least  —  a  great  comfort  in  a 
short  stay  —  that  none  of  my  early  memories  were  likely  to  change 
places  and  that  I  could  take  up  my  admirations  where  I  had  left 
them.  I  still  found  Carpaccio  delightful,  Veronese  magnificent, 
Titian  supremely  beautiful  and  Tintoret  scarce  to  be  appraised. 
I  repaired  immediately  to  the  little  church  of  San  Cassano,  which 
contains  the  smaller  of  Tintoret's  two  great  Crucifixions;  and 
when  I  had  looked  at  it  a  while  I  drew  a  long  breath  and  felt  I 
could  now  face  any  other  picture  in  Venice  with  proper  self- 
possession.  It  seemed  to  me  I  had  advanced  to  the  uttermost  limit 
of  painting;  that  beyond  this  another  art  —  inspired  poetry  — 
begins,  and  that  Bellini,  Veronese,  Giorgione,  and  Titian,  all  join 
ing  hands  and  straining  every  muscle  of  their  genius,  reach  for 
ward  not  so  far  but  that  they  leave  a  visible  space  in  which  Tin 
toret  alone  is  master.  I  well  remember  the  exaltations  to  which 
he  lifted  me  when  first  I  learned  to  know  him ;  but  the  glow  of 
that  comparatively  youthful  amazement  is  dead,  and  with  it, 
I  fear,  that  confident  vivacity  of  phrase  of  which,  in  trying  to  utter 

[78] 


VENICE:   AN   EARLY   IMPRESSION 

my  impressions,  I  felt  less  the  magniloquence  than  the  impo 
tence.  In  .his  power  there  are  many  weak  spots,  mysterious  lapses 
and  fitful  intermissions ;  but  when  the  list  of  his  faults  is  complete 
he  still  remains  to  me  the  most  interesting  of  painters.  His  repu 
tation  rests  chiefly  on  a  more  superficial  sort  of  merit  —  his  energy, 
his  unsurpassed  productivity,  his  being,  as  Theophile  Gautier 
says,  le  roi  des  fougueux.  These  qualities  are  immense,  but  the 
great  source  of  his  impressiveness  is  that  his  indefatigable  hand 
never  drew  a  line  that  was  not,  as  one  may  say,  a  moral  line.  No 
painter  ever  had  such  breadth  and  such  depth;  and  even  Titian, 
beside  him,  scarce  figures  as  more  than  a  great  decorative  artist. 
Mr.  Ruskin,  whose  eloquence  in  dealing  with  the  great  Vene 
tians  sometimes  outruns  his  discretion,  is  fond  of  speaking  even 
of  Veronese  as  a  painter  of  deep  spiritual  intentions.  This,  it 
seems  to  me,  is  pushing  matters  too  far,  and  the  author  of  "The 
Rape  of  F,uropa"  is,  pictorially  speaking,  no  greater  casuist  than 
any  other  genius  of  supreme  good  taste.  Titian  was  assuredly  a 
mighty  poet,  but  Tintoret  —  well,  Tintoret  was  almost  a  prophet. 
Before  his  greatest  works  you  are  conscious  of  a  sudden  evapora 
tion  of  old  doubts  and  dilemmas,  and  the  eternal  problem  of  the 
conflict  between  idealism  and  realism  dies  the  most  natural  of 
deaths.  In  his  genius  the  problem  is  practically  solved;  the  al 
ternatives  are  so  harmoniously  interfused  that  I  defy  the  keenest 
critic  to  say  where  one  begins  and  the  other  ends.  The  home 
liest  prose  melts  into  the  most  ethereal  poetry  —  the  literal  and 
the  imaginative  fairly  confound  their  identity. 

This,  however,  is  vague  praise.    Tintoret's  great  merit,  to  my 

[79] 


ITALIAN   HOURS 

mind,  was  his  unequalled  distinctness  of  vision.  When  once  he 
had  conceived  the  germ  of  a  scene  it  defined  itself  to  his  imagi 
nation  with  an  intensity,  an  amplitude,  an  individuality  of  ex 
pression,  which  makes  one's  observation  of  his  pictures  seem  less 
an  operation  of  the  mind  than  a  kind  of  supplementary  experi 
ence  of  life.  Veronese  and  Titian  are  content  with  a  much  looser 
specification,  as  their  treatment  of  any  subject  that  the  author  of 
the  Crucifixion  at  SanCassano  has  also  treated  abundantly  proves. 
There  are  few  more  suggestive  contrasts  than  that  between  the 
absence  of  a  total  character  at  all  commensurate  with  its  scat 
tered  variety  and  brilliancy  in  Veronese's  "Marriage  of  Cana," 
at  the  Louvre,  and  the  poignant,  almost  startling,  complete 
ness  of  Tintoret's  illustration  of  the  theme  at  the  Salute  church. 
To  compare  his  "Presentation  of  the  Virgin,"  at  the  Madonna 
dell'  Orto,  with  Titian's  at  the  Academy,  or  his  "Annuncia 
tion"  with  Titian's  close  at  hand,  is  to  measure  the  essential 
difference  between  observation  and  imagination.  One  has  cer 
tainly  not  said  all  that  there  is  to  say  for  Titian  when  one  has 
called  him  an  observer.  //  y  mettait  du  sien,  and  I  use  the  term 
to  designate  roughly  the  artist  whose  apprehension,  infinitely 
deep  and  strong  when  applied  to  the  single  figure  or  to  easily 
balanced  groups,  spends  itself  vainly  on  great  dramatic  combina 
tions  —  or  rather  leaves  them  ungauged.  It  was  the  whole  scene 
that  Tintoret  seemed  to  have  beheld  in  a  flash  of  inspiration 
intense  enough  to  stamp  it  ineffaceably  on  his  perception;  and 
it  was  the  whole  scene,  complete,  peculiar,  individual,  unprece 
dented,  that  he  committed  to  canvas  with  all  the  vehemence  of 

[  80  ] 


VENICE:   AN   EARLY   IMPRESSION 

his  talent.  Compare  his  "Last  Supper,"  at  San  Giorgio  —  its 
long,  diagonally  placed  table,  its  dusky  spaciousness,  its  scat 
tered  lamp-light  and  halo-light,  its  startled,  gesticulating  fig 
ures,  its  richly  realistic  foreground  —  with  the  customary  formal, 
almost  mathematical  rendering  of  the  subject,  in  which  impres- 
siveness  seems  to  have  been  sought  in  elimination  rather  than 
comprehension.  You  get  from  Tintoret's  work  the  impression 
that  he  felt,  pictorially,  the  great,  beautiful,  terrible  spectacle  of 
human  life  very  much  as  Shakespeare  felt  it  poetically  —  with 
a  heart  that  never  ceased  to  beat  a  passionate  accompaniment 
to  every  stroke  of  his  brush.  Thanks  to  this  fact  his  works  are 
signally  grave,  and  their  almost  universal  and  rapidly  increas 
ing  decay  does  n't  relieve  their  gloom.  Nothing  indeed  can  well 
be  sadder  than  the  great  collection  of  Tintorets  at  San  Rocco. 
Incurable  blackness  is  settling  fast  upon  all  of  them,  and  they 
frown  at  you  across  the  sombre  splendour  of  their  great  cham 
bers  like  gaunt  twilight  phantoms  of  pictures.  To  our  children's 
children  Tintoret,  as  things  are  going,  can  be  hardly  more  than 
a  name ;  and  such  of  them  as  shall  miss  the  tragic  beauty,  already 
so  dimmed  and  stained,  of  the  great  "Bearing  of  the  Cross"  in 
that  temple  of  his  spirit  will  live  and  die  without  knowing  the 
largest  eloquence  of  art.  If  you  wish  to  add  the  last  touch  of 
solemnity  to  the  place  recall  as  vividly  as  possible  while  you  linger 
at  San  Rocco  the  painter's  singularly  interesting  portrait  of  him 
self,  at  the  Louvre.  The  old  man  looks  out  of  the  canvas  from 
beneath  a  brow  as  sad  as  a  sunless  twilight,  with  just  such  a 
stoical  hopelessness  as  you  might  fancy  him  to  wear  if  he  stood 

[81  ] 


ITALIAN  HOURS 

at  your  side  gazing  at  his  rotting  canvases.  It  is  n't  whimsical  to 
read  it  as  the  face  of  a  man  who  felt  that  he  had  given  the  world 
more  than  the  world  was  likely  to  repay.  Indeed  before  every  pic 
ture  of  Tintoret  you  may  remember  this  tremendous  portrait  with 
profit.  On  one  side  the  power,  the  passion,  the  illusion  of  his  art ; 
on  the  other  the  mortal  fatigue  of  his  spirit.  The  world's  know 
ledge  of  him  is  so  small  that  the  portrait  throws  a  doubly  pre 
cious  light  on  his  personality ;  and  when  we  wonder  vainly  what 
manner  of  man  he  was,  and  what  were  his  purpose,  his  faith  and 
his  method,  we  may  find  forcible  assurance  there  that  they  were 
at  any  rate  his  life  —  one  of  the  most  intellectually  passionate 
ever  led. 

Verona,  which  was  my  last  Italian  stopping-place,  is  in  any 
conditions  a  delightfully  interesting  city;  but  the  kindness  of  my 
own  memory  of  it  is  deepened  by  a  subsequent  ten  days'  experi 
ence  of  Germany.  I  rose  one  morning  at  Verona,  and  went  to  bed 
at  night  at  Botzen!  The  statement  needs  no  comment,  and  the 
two  places,  though  but  fifty  miles  apart,  are  as  painfully  dissimi 
lar  as  their  names.  I  had  prepared  myself  for  your  delectation 
with  a  copious  tirade  on  German  manners,  German  scenery, 
German  art  and  the  German  stage  —  on  the  lights  and  shadows 
of  Innsbruck,  Munich,  Nuremberg  and  Heidelberg ;  but  just  as 
I  was  about  to  put  pen  to  paper  I  glanced  into  a  little  volume 
on  these  very  topics  lately  published  by  that  famous  novelist 
and  moralist,  M.  Ernest  Feydeau,  the  fruit  of  a  summer's  ob 
servation  at  Homburg.  This  work  produced  a  reaction;  and  if 
I  chose  to  follow  M.  Feydeau's  own  example  when  he  wishes  to 

•     [82  ] 


VENICE:   AN   EARLY   IMPRESSION 

qualify  his  approbation  I  might  call  his  treatise  by  any  vile  name 
known  to  the  speech  of  man.  But  I  content  myself  with  pronoun 
cing  it  superficial.  I  then  reflect  that  my  own  opportunities  for 
seeing  and  judging  were  extremely  limited,  and  I  suppress  my 
tirade,  lest  some  more  enlightened  critic  should  come  and  hang 
me  with  the  same  rope.  Its  sum  and  substance  was  to  have  been 
that  —  superficially  —  Germany  is  ugly ;  that  Munich  is  a  night 
mare,  Heidelberg  a  disappointment  (in  spite  of  its  charming 
castle)  and  even  Nuremberg  not  a  joy  for  ever.  But  comparisons 
are  odious,  and  if  Munich  is  ugly  Verona  is  beautiful  enough.  You 
may  laugh  at  my  logic,  but  will  probably  assent  to  my  meaning. 
I  carried  away  from  Verona  a  precious  mental  picture  upon  which 
I  cast  an  introspective  glance  whenever  between  Botzen  and 
Strassburg  the  oppression  of  external  circumstance  became  pain 
ful.  It  was  a  lovely  August  afternoon  in  the  Roman  arena  — 
a  ruin  in  which  repair  and  restoration  have  been  so  watchfully 
and  plausibly  practised  that  it  seems  all  of  one  harmonious  anti 
quity.  The  vast  stony  oval  rose  high  against  the  sky  in  a  single 
clear,  continuous  line,  broken  here  and  there  only  by  strolling 
and  reclining  loungers.  The  massive  tiers  inclined  in  solid  monot 
ony  to  the  central  circle,  in  which  a  small  open-air  theatre  was 
in  active  operation.  A  small  quarter  of  the  great  slope  of  masonry 
facing  the  stage  was  roped  off  into  an  auditorium,  in  which  the 
narrow  level  space  between  the  foot-lights  and  the  lowest  step 
figured  as  the  pit.  Foot-lights  are  a  figure  of  speech,  for  the  per 
formance  was  going  on  in  the  broad  glow  of  the  afternoon,  with 
a  delightful  and  apparently  by  no  means  misplaced  confidence 

[83] 


ITALIAN  HOURS 

in  the  good-will  of  the  spectators.  What  the  piece  was  that  was 
deemed  so  superbly  able  to  shift  for  itself  I  know  not  —  very 
possibly  the  same  drama  that  I  remember  seeing  advertised 
during  my  former  visit  to  Verona ;  nothing  less  than  La  Tremenda 
Giustizia  di  Dio.  If  titles  are  worth  anything  this  product  of  the 
melodramatist's  art  might  surely  stand  upon  its  own  legs.  Along 
the  tiers  above  the  little  group  of  regular  spectators  was  gathered 
a  free-list  of  unauthorised  observers,  who,  although  beyond 
ear-shot,  must  have  been  enabled  by  the  generous  breadth  of 
Italian  gesture  to  follow  the  tangled  thread  of  the  piece.  It  was 
all  deliciously  Italian  —  the  mixture  of  old  life  and  new,  the 
mountebank's  booth  (it  was  hardly  more)  grafted  on  the  an 
tique  circus,  the  dominant  presence  of  a  mighty  architecture,  the 
loungers  and  idlers  beneath  the  kindly  sky  and  upon  the  sun- 
warmed  stones.  I  never  felt  more  keenly  the  difference  between 
the  background  to  life  in  very  old  and  very  new  civilisations. 
There  are  other  things  in  Verona  to  make  it  a  liberal  education 
to  be  born  there,  though  that  it  is  one  for  the  contemporary 
Veronese  I  don't  pretend  to  say.  The  Tombs  of  the  Scaligers, 
with  their  soaring  pinnacles,  their  high-poised  canopies,  their 
exquisite  refinement  and  concentration  of  the  Gothic  idea,  I 
can't  profess,  even  after  much  worshipful  gazing,  to  have  fully 
comprehended  and  enjoyed.  They  seemed  to  me  full  of  deep 
architectural  meanings,  such  as  must  drop  gently  into  the  mind 
one  by  one,  after  infinite  tranquil  contemplation.  But  even  to 
the  hurried  and  preoccupied  traveller  the  solemn  little  chapel- 
yard  in  the  city's  heart,  in  which  they  stand  girdled  by  their 


EB 


VENICE:   AN   EARLY   IMPRESSION 

great  swaying  curtain  of  linked  and  twisted  iron,  is  one  of  the 
most  impressive  spots  in  Italy.  Nowhere  else  is  such  a  wealth 
of  artistic  achievement  crowded  into  so  narrow  a  space ;  nowhere 
else  are  the  daily  comings  and  goings  of  men  blessed  by  the 
presence  of  manlier  art.  Verona  is  rich  furthermore  in  beautiful 
churches  —  several  with  beautiful  names :  San  Fermo,  Santa 
Anastasia,  San  Zenone.  This  last  is  a  structure  of  high  antiquity 
and  of  the  most  impressive  loveliness.  The  nave  terminates  in 
a  double  choir,  that  is  a  sub-choir  or  crypt  into  which  you  de 
scend  and  where  you  wander  among  primitive  columns  whose 
variously  grotesque  capitals  rise  hardly  higher  than  your  head, 
and  an  upper  choral  plane  reached  by  broad  stairways  of  the 
bravest  effect.  I  shall  never  forget  the  impression  of  majestic 
chastity  that  I  received  from  the  great  nave  of  the  building  on 
my  former  visit.  I  then  decided  to  my  satisfaction  that  every 
church  is  from  the  devotional  point  of  view  a  solecism  that  has 
not  something  of  a  similar  absolute  felicity  of  proportion;  for 
strictly  formal  beauty  seems  best  to  express  our  conception  of 
spiritual  beauty.  The  nobly  serious  character  of  San  Zenone  is 
deepened  by  its  single  picture  —  a  masterpiece  of  the  most  seri 
ous  of  painters,  the  severe  and  exquisite  Mantegna. 

1872 


TWO   OLD   HOUSES  AND  THREE 
YOUNG  WOMEN 


TWO  OLD  HOUSES  AND  THREE 
YOUNG  WOMEN 

HERE  are  times  and  places  that  come 
back  yet  again,  but  that,  when  the  brood 
ing  tourist  puts  out  his  hand  to  them, 
meet  it  a  little  slowly,  or  even  seem  to 
recede  a  step,  as  if  in  slight  fear  of  some 
liberty  he  may  take.  Surely  they  should 
know  by  this  time  that  he  is  capable  of 
taking  none.  He  has  his  own  way  —  he 
makes  it  all  right.  It  now  becomes  just  a  part  of  the  charming 
solicitation  that  it  presents  precisely  a  problem  —  that  of  giving 
the  particular  thing  as  much  as  possible  without  at  the  same 
time  giving  it,  as  we  say,  away.  There  are  considerations,  pro 
prieties,  a  necessary  indirectness  — he  must  use,  in  short,  a  little 
art.  No  necessity,  however,  more  than  this,  makes  him  warm 
to  his  work,  and  thus  it  is  that,  after  all,  he  hangs  his  three 
pictures. 


THE  evening  that  was  to  give  me  the  first  of  them  was  by  no 
means  the  first  occasion  of  my  asking  myself  if  that  inveterate 
"style"  of  which  we  talk  so  much  be  absolutely  conditioned  - 


ITALIAN   HOURS 

in  dear  old  Venice  and  elsewhere  —  on  decrepitude.  Is  it  the 
style  that  has  brought  about  the  decrepitude,  or  the  decrepitude 
that  has,  as  it  were,  intensified  and  consecrated  the  style  ?  There 
is  an  ambiguity  about  it  all  that  constantly  haunts  and  beguiles. 
Dear  old  Venice  has  lost  her  complexion,  her  figure,  her  repu 
tation,  her  self-respect ;  and  yet,  with  it  all,  has  so  puzzlingly 
not  lost  a  shred  of  her  distinction.  Perhaps  indeed  the  case  is 
simpler  than  it  seems,  for  the  poetry  of  misfortune  is  familiar 
to  us  all,  whereas,  in  spite  of  a  stroke  here  and  there  of  some 
happy  justice  that  charms,  we  scarce  find  ourselves  anywhere  ar 
rested  by  the  poetry  of  a  run  of  luck.  The  misfortune  of  Ven 
ice  being,  accordingly,  at  every  point,  what  we  most  touch,  feel 
and  see,  we  end  by  assuming  it  to  be  of  the  essence  of  her  dig 
nity;  a  consequence,  we  become  aware,  by  the  way,  sufficiently 
discouraging  to  the  general  application  or  pretension  of  style, 
and  all  the  more  that,  to  make  the  final  felicity  deep,  the  original 
greatness  must  have  been  something  tremendous.  If  it  be  the 
ruins  that  are  noble  we  have  known  plenty  that  were  not,  and 
moreover  there  are  degrees  and  varieties:  certain  monuments, 
solid  survivals,  hold  up  their  heads  and  decline  to  ask  for  a  grain 
of  your  pity.  Well,  one  knows  of  course  when  to  keep  one's 
pity  to  oneself;  yet  one  clings,  even  in  the  face  of  the  colder 
stare,  to  one's  prized  Venetian  privilege  of  making  the  sense 
of  doom  and  decay  a  part  of  every  impression.  Cheerful  work, 
it  may  be  said  of  course;  and  it  is  doubtless  only  in  Venice 
that  you  gain  more  by  such  a  trick  than  you  lose.  What  was 
most  beautiful  is  gone;  what  was  next  most  beautiful  is,  thank 

[9°] 


TWO   OLD   HOUSES 

goodness,  going  —  that,  I  think,  is  the  monstrous  description 
of  the  better  part  of  your  thought.  Is  it  really  your  fault  if  the 
place  makes  you  want  so  desperately  to  read  history  into  every 
thing  ? 

You  do  that  wherever  you  turn  and  wherever  you  look,  and 
you  do  it,  I  should  say,  most  of  all  at  night.  It  comes  to  you  there 
with  longer  knowledge,  and  with  all  deference  to  what  flushes 
and  shimmers,  that  the  night  is  the  real  time.  It  perhaps  even 
would  n't  take  much  to  make  you  award  the  palm  to  the  nights 
of  winter.  This  is  certainly  true  for  the  form  of  progression  that 
is  most  characteristic,  for  every  question  of  departure  and  arri 
val  by  gondola.  The  little  closed  cabin  of  this  perfect  vehicle, 
the  movement,  the  darkness  and  the  plash,  the  indistinguishable 
swerves  and  twists,  all  the  things  you  don't  see  and  all  the  things 
you  do  feel — each  dim  recognition  and  obscure  arrest  is  a  possible 
throb  of  your  sense  of  being  floated  to  your  doom,  even  when 
the  truth  is  simply  and  sociably  that  you  are  going  out  to  tea. 
Nowhere  else  is  anything  as  innocent  so  mysterious,  nor  anything 
as  mysterious  so  pleasantly  deterrent  to  protest.  These  are  the 
moments  when  you  are  most  daringly  Venetian,  most  content  to 
leave  cheap  trippers  and  other  aliens  the  high  light  of  the  mid- 
lagoon  and  the  pursuit  of  pink  and  gold.  The  splendid  day  is 
good  enough  for  them ;  what  is  best  for  you  is  to  stop  at  last,  as 
you  are  now  stopping,  among  clustered  pali  and  softly-shifting 
poops  and  prows,  at  a  great  flight  of  water-steps  that  play  their 
admirable  part  in  the  general  effect  of  a  great  entrance.  The 
high  doors  stand  open  from  them  to  the  paved  chamber  of  a 


ITALIAN  HOURS 

basement  tremendously  tall  and  not  vulgarly  lighted,  from  which, 
in  turn,  mounts  the  slow  stone  staircase  that  draws  you  further 
on.  The  great  point  is,  that  if  you  are  worthy  of  this  impression 
at  all,  there  is  n't  a  single  item  of  it  of  which  the  association  is  n't 
noble.  Hold  to  it  fast  that  there  is  no  other  such  dignity  of  arri 
val  as  arrival  by  water.  Hold  to  it  that  to  float  and  slacken  and 
gently  bump,  to  creep  out  of  the  low,  dark  felze  and  make  the 
few  guided  movements  and  find  the  strong  crooked  and  offered 
arm,  and  then,  beneath  lighted  palace-windows,  pass  up  the  few 
damp  steps  on  the  precautionary  carpet  —  hold  to  it  that  these 
things  constitute  a  preparation  of  which  the  only  defect  is  that  it 
may  sometimes  perhaps  really  prepare  too  much.  It 's  so  stately 
that  what  can  come  after  ?  —  it 's  so  good  in  itself  that  what, 
upstairs,  as  we  comparative  vulgarians  say,  can  be  better  ?  Hold 
to  it,  at  any  rate,  that  if  a  lady,  in  especial,  scrambles  out  of  a 
carriage,  tumbles  out  of  a  cab,  flops  out  of  a  tram-car,  and  hurtles, 
projectile-like,  out  of  a  "lightning-elevator,"  she  alights  from  the 
Venetian  conveyance  as  Cleopatra  may  have  stepped  from  her 
barge.  Upstairs  —  whatever  may  be  yet  in  store  for  her  —  her 
entrance  shall  still  advantageously  enjoy  the  support  most  op 
posed  to  the  "momentum"  acquired.  The  beauty  of  the  matter 
has  been  in  the  absence  of  all  momentum  —  elsewhere  so  scien 
tifically  applied  to  us,  from  behind,  by  the  terrible  life  of  our 
day  —  and  in  the  fact  that,  as  the  elements  of  slowness,  the  feli 
cities  of  deliberation,  doubtless  thus  all  hang  together,  the  last 
of  calculable  dangers  is  to  enter  a  great  Venetian  room  with  a 
rush. 

[92] 


TWO   OLD   HOUSES 

Not  the  least  happy  note,  therefore,  of  the  picture  I  am  trying 
to  frame  is  that  there  was  absolutely  no  rushing;  not  only  in  the 
sense  of  a  scramble  over  marble  floors,  but,  by  reason  of  some 
thing  dissuasive  and  distributive  in  the  very  air  of  the  place,  a 
suggestion,  under  the  fine  old  ceilings  and  among  types  of  face 
and  figure  abounding  in  the  unexpected,  that  here  were  many 
things  to  consider.  Perhaps  the  simplest  rendering  of  a  scene  into 
the  depths  of  which  there  are  good  grounds  of  discretion  for 
not  sinking  would  be  just  this  emphasis  on  the  value  of  the  unex 
pected  for  such  occasions  —  with  due  qualification,  naturally,  of 
its  degree.  Unexpectedness  pure  and  simple,  it  is  needless  to  say, 
may  easily  endanger  any  social  gathering,  and  I  hasten  to  add 
moreover  that  the  figures  and  faces  I  speak  of  were  probably  not 
in  the  least  unexpected  to  each  other.  The  stage  they  occupied 
was  a  stage  of  variety  —  Venice  has  ever  been  a  garden  of  strange 
social  flowers.  It  is  only  as  reflected  in  the  consciousness  of  the 
visitor  from  afar  —  brooding  tourist  even  call  him,  or  sharp-eyed 
bird  on  the  branch  —  that  I  attempt  to  give  you  the  little  drama ; 
beginning  with  the  felicity  that  most  appealed  to  him,  the  visible, 
unmistakable  fact  that  he  was  the  only  representative  of  his  class. 
The  whole  of  the  rest  of  the  business  was  but  what  he  saw  and 
felt  and  fancied  —  what  he  was  to  remember  and  what  he  was 
to  forget.  Through  it  all,  I  may  say  distinctly,  he  clung  to  his 
great  Venetian  clue  —  the  explanation  of  everything  by  the  his 
toric  idea.  It  was  a  high  historic  house,  with  such  a  quantity  of 
recorded  past  twinkling  in  the  multitudinous  candles  that  one 
grasped  at  the  idea  of  something  waning  and  displaced,  and  might 

[93] 


ITALIAN  HOURS 

even  fondly  and  secretly  nurse  the  conceit  that  what  one  was 
having  was  just  the  very  last.  Was  n't  it  certainly,  for  instance, 
no  mere  illusion  that  there  is  no  appreciable  future  left  for  such 
manners  —  an  urbanity  so  comprehensive,  a  form  so  transmitted, 
as  those  of  such  a  hostess  and  such  a  host  ?  The  future  is  for 
a  different  conception  of  the  graceful  altogether  —  so  far  as  it 's 
for  a  conception  of  the  graceful  at  all.  Into  that  computation  I 
shall  not  attempt  to  enter;  but  these  representative  products  of 
an  antique  culture,  at  least,  and  one  of  which  the  secret  seems  more 
likely  than  not  to  be  lost,  were  not  common,  nor  indeed  was  any 
one  else  —  in  the  circle  to  which  the  picture  most  insisted  on 
restricting  itself. 

Neither,  on  the  other  hand,  was  any  one  either  very  beautiful 
or  very  fresh:  which  was  again,  exactly,  a  precious  "value" 
on  an  occasion  that  was  to  shine  most,  to  the  imagination,  by 
the  complexity  of  its  references.  Such  old,  old  women  with 
such  old,  old  jewels;  such  ugly,  ugly  ones  with  such  handsome, 
becoming  names;  such  battered,  fatigued  gentlemen  with  such 
inscrutable  decorations ;  such  an  absence  of  youth,  for  the  most 
part,  in  either  sex  —  of  the  pink  and  white,  the  "bud"  of  new 
worlds;  such  a  general  personal  air,  in  fine,  of  being  the  worse 
for  a  good  deal  of  wear  in  various  old  ones.  It  was  not  a  soci 
ety —  that  was  clear  —  in  which  little  girls  and  boys  set  the 
tune ;  and  there  was  that  about  it  all  that  might  well  have  cast  a 
shadow  on  the  path  of  even  the  most  successful  little  girl.  Yet 
also  —  let  me  not  be  rudely  inexact  —  it  was  in  honour  of  youth 
and  freshness  that  we  had  all  been  convened.  The  fiancailles 

[94] 


TWO   OLD   HOUSES 

of  the  last  —  unless  it  were  the  last  but  one  —  unmarried  daugh 
ter  of  the  house  had  just  been  brought  to  a  proper  climax;  the 
contract  had  been  signed,  the  betrothal  rounded  off  —  I  'm  not 
sure  that  the  civil  marriage  had  n't,  that  day,  taken  place.  The 
occasion  then  had  in  fact  the  most  charming  of  heroines  and 
the  most  ingenuous  of  heroes,  a  young  man,  the  latter,  all  happily 
suffused  with  a  fair  Austrian  blush.  The  young  lady  had  had, 
besides  other  more  or  less  shining  recent  ancestors,  a  very  famous 
paternal  grandmother,  who  had  played  a  great  part  in  the  polit 
ical  history  of  her  time  and  whose  portrait,  in  the  taste  and 
dress  of  1830,  was  conspicuous  in  one  of  the  rooms.  The  grand 
daughter  of  this  celebrity,  of  royal  race,  was  strikingly  like  her 
and,  by  a  fortunate  stroke,  had  been  habited,  combed,  curled 
in  a  manner  exactly  to  reproduce  the  portrait.  These  things 
were  charming  and  amusing,  as  indeed  were  several  other  things 
besides.  The  great  Venetian  beauty  of  our  period  was  there, 
and  nature  had  equipped  the  great  Venetian  beauty  for  her  part 
with  the  properest  sense  of  the  suitable,  or  in  any  case  with  a 
splendid  generosity  —  since  on  the  ideally  suitable  character 
of  so  brave  a  human  symbol  who  shall  have  the  last  word  ?  This 
responsible  agent  was  at  all  events  the  beauty  in  the  world  about 
whom  probably,  most,  the  absence  of  question  (an  absence 
never  wholly  propitious)  would  a  little  smugly  and  monotonously 
flourish :  the  one  thing  wanting  to  the  interest  she  inspired  was 
thus  the  possibility  of  ever  discussing  it.  There  were  plenty  of 
suggestive  subjects  round  about,  on  the  other  hand,  as  to  which 
the  exchange  of  ideas  would  by  no  means  necessarily  have 

[95] 


ITALIAN  HOURS 

dropped.  You  profit  to  the  full  at  such  times  by  all  the  old 
voices,  echoes,  images  —  by  that  element  of  the  history  of  Venice 
which  represents  all  Europe  as  having  at  one  time  and  another 
revelled  or  rested,  asked  for  pleasure  or  for  patience  there ;  which 
gives  you  the  place  supremely  as  the  refuge  of  endless  strange 
secrets,  broken  fortunes  and  wounded  hearts. 


II 


THERE  had  been,  on  lines  of  further  or  different  speculation, 
a  young  Englishman  to  luncheon,  and  the  young  Englishman 
had  proved  "sympathetic"  ;  so  that  when  it  was  a  question  after 
wards  of  some  of  the  more  hidden  treasures,  the  browner  depths 
of  the  old  churches,  the  case  became  one  for  mutual  guidance 
and  gratitude  —  for  a  small  afternoon  tour  and  the  wait  of  a 
pair  of  friends  in  the  warm  little  campi,  at  locked  doors  for 
which  the  nearest  urchin  had  scurried  off  to  fetch  the  keeper  of 
the  key.  There  are  few  brown  depths  to-day  into  which  the 
light  of  the  hotels  does  n't  shine,  and  few  hidden  treasures  about 
which  pages  enough,  doubtless,  have  n't  already  been  printed : 
my  business,  accordingly,  let  me  hasten  to  say,  is  not  now  with 
the  fond  renewal  of  any  discovery  —  at  least  in  the  order  of  im 
pressions  most  usual.  Your  discovery  may  be,  for  that  matter, 
renewed  every  week ;  the  only  essential  is  the  good  luck  —  which 
a  fair  amount  of  practice  has  taught  you  to  count  upon  —  of  not 
finding,  for  the  particular  occasion,  other  discoverers  in  the  field. 

[96] 


TWO   OLD   HOUSES 

Then,  in  the  quiet  corner,  with  the  closed  door  —  then  in  the 
presence  of  the  picture  and  of  your  companion's  sensible  emo 
tion  —  not  only  the  original  happy  moment,  but  everything  else, 
is  renewed.  Yet  once  again  it  can  all  come  back.  The  old  custode, 
shuffling  about  in  the  dimness,  jerks  away,  to  make  sure  of  his 
tip,  the  old  curtain  that  is  n't  much  more  modern  than  the 
wonderful  work  itself.  He  does  his  best  to  create  light  where 
light  can  never  be;  but  you  have  your  practised  groping  gaze, 
and  in  guiding  the  young  eyes  of  your  less  confident  associate, 
moreover,  you  feel  you  possess  the  treasure.  These  are  the  re 
fined  pleasures  that  Venice  has  still  to  give,  these  odd  happy 
passages  of  communication  and  response. 

But  the  point  of  my  reminiscence  is  that  there  were  other 
communications  that  day,  as  there  were  certainly  other  responses. 
I  have  forgotten  exactly  what  it  was  we  were  looking  for - 
without  much  success  —  when  we  met  the  three  Sisters.  Nothing 
requires  more  care,  as  a  long  knowledge  of  Venice  works  in, 
than  not  to  lose  the  useful  faculty  of  getting  lost.  I  had  so  suc 
cessfully  done  my  best  to  preserve  it  that  I  could  at  that  moment 
conscientiously  profess  an  absence  of  any  suspicion  of  where 
we  might  be.  It  proved  enough  that,  wherever  we  were,  we 
were  where  the  three  sisters  found  us.  This  was  on  a  little  bridge 
near  a  big  campo,  and  a  part  of  the  charm  of  the  matter  was 
the  theory  that  it  was  very  much  out  of  the  way.  They  took 
us  promptly  in  hand  —  they  were  only  walking  over  to  San 
Marco  to  match  some  coloured  wool  for  the  manufacture  of  such 
belated  cushions  as  still  bloom  with  purple  and  green  in  the  long 

[97] 


ITALIAN   HOURS 

leisures  of  old  palaces;  and  that  mild  errand  could  easily  open 
a  parenthesis.  The  obscure  church  we  had  feebly  imagined  we 
were  looking  for  proved,  if  I  am  not  mistaken,  that  of  the  sisters' 
parish;  as  to  which  I  have  but  a  confused  recollection  of  a  large 
grey  void  and  of  admiring  for  the  first  time  a  fine  work  of  art  of 
which  I  have  now  quite  lost  the  identity.  This  was  the  effect 
of  the  charming  beneficence  of  the  three  sisters,  who  presently 
were  to  give  our  adventure  a  turn  in  the  emotion  of  which  every 
thing  that  had  preceded  seemed  as  nothing.  It  actually  strikes 
me  even  as  a  little  dim  to  have  been  told  by  them,  as  we  all  fared 
together,  that  a  certain  low,  wide  house,  in  a  small  square  as  to 
which  I  found  myself  without  particular  association,  had  been 
in  the  far-off  time  the  residence  of  George  Sand.  And  yet  this 
was  a  fact  that,  though  I  could  then  only  feel  it  must  be  for 
another  day,  would  in  a  different  connection  have  set  me  richly 
reconstructing. 

Madame  Sand's  famous  Venetian  year  has  been  of  late  im 
mensely  in  the  air  —  a  tub  of  soiled  linen  which  the  muse  of 
history,  rolling  her  sleeves  well  up,  has  not  even  yet  quite  ceased 
energetically  and  publicly  to  wash.  The  house  in  question  must 
have  been  the  house  to  which  the  wonderful  lady  betook  her 
self  when,  in  1834,  after  the  dramatic  exit  of  Alfred  de  Musset, 
she  enjoyed  that  remarkable  period  of  rest  and  refreshment 
with  the  so  long  silent,  the  but  recently  rediscovered,  reported, 
extinguished,  Doctor  Pagello.  As  an  old  Sandist  —  not  exactly 
indeed  of  the  premiere  heure,  but  of  the  fine  high  noon  and 
golden  afternoon  of  the  great  career  —  I  had  been,  though  I 

[98  ] 


TWO   OLD   HOUSES 

confess  too  inactively,  curious  as  to  a  few  points  in  the  topo 
graphy  of  the  eminent  adventure  to  which  I  here  allude;  but 
had  never  got  beyond  the  little  public  fact,  in  itself  always  a  bit 
of  a  thrill  to  the  Sandist,  that  the  present  Hotel  Danieli  had  been 
the  scene  of  its  first  remarkable  stages.  I  am  not  sure  indeed 
that  the  curiosity  I  speak  of  has  not  at  last,  in  my  breast,  yielded 
to  another  form  of  wonderment  —  truly  to  the  rather  rueful 
question  of  why  we  have  so  continued  to  concern  ourselves,  and 
why  the  fond  observer  of  the  footprints  of  genius  is  likely  so 
to  continue,  with  a  body  of  discussion,  neither  in  itself  and  in  its 
day,  nor  in  its  preserved  and  attested  records,  at  all  positively 
edifying.  The  answer  to  such  an  inquiry  would  doubtless  reward 
patience,  but  I  fear  we  can  now  glance  at  its  possibilities  only 
long  enough  to  say  that  interesting  persons  —  so  they  be  of  a 
sufficiently  approved  and  established  interest  —  render  in  some 
degree  interesting  whatever  happens  to  them,  and  give  it  an 
importance  even  when  very  little  else  (as  in  the  case  I  refer  to) 
may  have  operated  to  give  it  a  dignity.  Which  is  where  I  leave 
the  issue  of  further  identifications. 

For  the  three  sisters,  in  the  kindest  way  in  the  world,  had 
asked  us  if  we  already  knew  their  sequestered  home  and  whether, 
in  case  we  did  n't,  we  should  be  at  all  amused  to  see  it.  My  own 
acquaintance  with  them,  though  not  of  recent  origin,  had  hitherto 
lacked  this  enhancement,  at  which  we  both  now  grasped  with  the 
full  instinct,  indescribable  enough,  of  what  it  was  likely  to  give. 
But  how,  for  that  matter,  either,  can  I  find  the  right  expression 
of  what  was  to  remain  with  us  of  this  episode  ?  It  is  the  fault 

[99] 


ITALIAN   HOURS 

of  the  sad-eyed  old  witch  of  Venice  that  she  so  easily  puts  more 
into  things  that  can  pass  under  the  common  names  that  do  for 
them  elsewhere.  Too  much  for  a  rough  sketch  was  to  be  seen 
and  felt  in  the  home  of  the  three  sisters,  and  in  the  delightful 
and  slightly  pathetic  deviation  of  their  doing  us  so  simply  and 
freely  the  honours  of  it.  What  was  most  immediately  marked 
was  their  resigned  cosmopolite  state,  the  effacement  of  old  con 
ventional  lines  by  foreign  contact  and  example;  by  the  action, 
too,  of  causes  full  of  a  special  interest,  but  not  to  be  empha 
sised  perhaps  —  granted  indeed  they  be  named  at  all  —  with 
out  a  certain  sadness  of  sympathy.  If  "style,"  in  Venice,  sits 
among  ruins,  let  us  always  lighten  our  tread  when  we  pay  her 
a  visit. 

Our  steps  were  in  fact,  I  am  happy  to  think,  almost  soft 
enough  for  a  death-chamber  as  we  stood  in  the  big,  vague  sala 
of  the  three  sisters,  spectators  of  their  simplified  state  and  their 
beautiful  blighted  rooms,  the  memories,  the  portraits,  the 
shrunken  relics  of  nine  Doges.  If  I  wanted  a  first  chapter  it  was 
here  made  to  my  hand;  the  painter  of  life  and  manners,  as  he 
glanced  about,  could  only  sigh  —  as  he  so  frequently  has  to  — 
over  the  vision  of  so  much  more  truth  than  he  can  use.  What  on 
earth  is  the  need  to  "invent,"  in  the  midst  of  tragedy  and  comedy 
that  never  cease  ?  Why,  with  the  subject  itself,  all  round,  so 
inimitable,  condemn  the  picture  to  the  silliness  of  trying  not  to 
be  aware  of  it  ?  The  charming  lonely  girls,  carrying  so  simply 
their  great  name  and  fallen  fortunes,  the  despoiled  decaduta 
house,  the  unfailing  Italian  grace,  the  space  so  out  of  scale  with 


TWO  OLD   HOUSES 

actual  needs,  the  absence  of  books,  the  presence  of  ennui,  the 
sense  of  the  length  of  the  hours  and  the  shortness  of  everything 
else  —  all  this  was  a  matter  not  only  for  a  second  chapter  and 
a  third,  but  for  a  whole  volume,  a  denoument  and  a  sequel. 

This  time,  unmistakably,  it  was  the  last — Wordsworth's 
stately  "shade  of  that  which  once  was  great";  and  it  was  almost 
as  if  our  distinguished  young  friends  had  consented  to  pass  away 
slowly  in  order  to  treat  us  to  the  vision.  Ends  are  only  ends  in 
truth,  for  the  painter  of  pictures,  when  they  are  more  or  less 
conscious  and  prolonged.  One  of  the  sisters  had  been  to  London, 
whence  she  had  brought  back  the  impression  of  having  seen 
at  the  British  Museum  a  room  exclusively  filled  with  books  and 
documents  devoted  to  the  commemoration  of  her  family.  She 
must  also  then  have  encountered  at  the  National  Gallery  the 
exquisite  specimen  of  an  early  Venetian  master  in  which  one  of 
her  ancestors,  then  head  of  the  State,  kneels  with  so  sweet  a 
dignity  before  the  Virgin  and  Child.  She  was  perhaps  old  enough, 
none  the  less,  to  have  seen  this  precious  work  taken  down  from 
the  wall  of  the  room  in  which  we  sat  and  —  on  terms  so  far  too 
easy  —  carried  away  for  ever ;  and  not  too  young,  at  all  events, 
to  have  been  present,  now  and  then,  when  her  candid  elders, 
enlightened  too  late  as  to  what  their  sacrifice  might  really  have 
done  for  them,  looked  at  each  other  with  the  pale  hush  of  the 
irreparable.  We  let  ourselves  note  that  these  were  matters  to 
put  a  great  deal  of  old,  old  history  into  sweet  young  Venetian 
faces. 


ITALIAN  HOURS 

III 

IN  Italy,  if  we  come  to  that,  this  particular  appearance  is  far 
from  being  only  in  the  streets,  where  we  are  apt  most  to  observe 
it  —  in  countenances  caught  as  we  pass  and  in  the  objects  marked 
by  the  guide-books  with  their  respective  stellar  allowances.  It 
is  behind  the  walls  of  the  houses  that  old,  old  history  is  thick 
and  that  the  multiplied  stars  of  Baedeker  might  often  best  find 
their  application.  The  feast  of  St.  John  the  Baptist  is  the  feast 
of  the  year  in  Florence,  and  it  seemed  to  me  on  that  night  that 
I  could  have  scattered  about  me  a  handful  of  these  signs.  I  had 
the  pleasure  of  spending  a  couple  of  hours  on  a  signal  high  terrace 
that  overlooks  the  Arno,  as  well  as  in  the  galleries  that  open  out 
to  it,  where  I  met  more  than  ever  the  pleasant  curious  question 
of  the  disparity  between  the  old  conditions  and  the  new  man 
ners.  Make  our  manners,  we  moderns,  as  good  as  we  can,  there 
is  still  no  getting  over  it  that  they  are  not  good  enough  for 
many  of  the  great  places.  This  was  one  of  those  scenes,  and  its 
greatness  came  out  to  the  full  into  the  hot  Florentine  evening, 
in  which  the  pink  and  golden  fires  of  the  pyrotechnics  arranged 
on  Ponte  Carraja  —  the  occasion  of  our  assembly — lighted  up 
the  large  issue.  The  "good  people"  beneath  were  a  huge,  hot, 
gentle,  happy  family ;  the  fireworks  on  the  bridge,  kindling  river 
as  well  as  sky,  were  delicate  and  charming ;  the  terrace  connected 
the  two  wings  that  give  bravery  to  the  front  of  the  palace, 
and  the  close-hung  pictures  in  the  rooms,  open  in  a  long  series, 

[    102] 


TWO   OLD   HOUSES 

offered  to  a  lover  of  quiet  perambulation  an  alternative  hard  to 
resist. 

Wherever  he  stood  —  on  the  broad  loggia,  in  the  cluster  of 
company,  among  bland  ejaculations  and  liquefied  ices,  or  in  the 
presence  of  the  mixed  masters  that  led  him  from  wall  to  wall 
—  such  a  seeker  for  the  spirit  of  each  occasion  could  only  turn 
it  over  that  in  the  first  place  this  was  an  intenser,  finer  little 
Florence  than  ever,  and  that  in  the  second  the  testimony  was 
again  wonderful  to  former  fashions  and  ideas.  What  did  they  do, 
in  the  other  time,  the  time  of  so  much  smaller  a  society,  smaller 
and  fewer  fortunes,  more  taste  perhaps  as  to  some  particulars, 
but  fewer  tastes,  at  any  rate,  and  fewer  habits  and  wants  —  what 
did  they  do  with  chambers  so  multitudinous  and  so  vast  ?  Put 
their  "state"  at  its  highest — and  we  know  of  many  ways  in 
which  it  must  have  broken  down  —  how  did  they  live  in  them 
without  the  aid  of  variety  ?  How  did  they,  in  minor  communities 
in  which  every  one  knew  every  one,  and  every  one's  impression 
and  effect  had  been  long,  as  we  say,  discounted,  find  represen 
tation  and  emulation  sufficiently  amusing  ?  Much  of  the  charm 
of  thinking  of  it,  however,  is  doubtless  that  we  are  not  able  to 
say.  This  leaves  us  with  the  conviction  that  does  them  most 
honour:  the  old  generations  built  and  arranged  greatly  for  the 
simple  reason  that  they  liked  it,  and  they  could  bore  themselves 
—  to  say  nothing  of  each  other,  when  it  came  to  that  — •  better 
in  noble  conditions  than  in  mean  ones. 

It  was  not,  I  must  add,  of  the  far-away  Florentine  age  that  I 
most  thought,  but  of  periods  more  recent  and  of  which  the  sound 

1 103] 


ITALIAN  HOURS 

and  beautiful  house  more  directly  spoke.  If  one  had  always  been 
homesick  for  the  Arno-side  of  the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth 
centuries,  here  was  a  chance,  and  a  better  one  than  ever,  to  taste 
again  of  the  cup.  Many  of  the  pictures  —  there  was  a  charming 
quarter  of  an  hour  when  I  had  them  to  myself  —  were  bad 
enough  to  have  passed  for  good  in  those  delightful  years.  Shades 
of  Grand-Dukes  encompassed  me  —  Dukes  of  the  pleasant  later 
sort  who  were  n't  really  grand.  There  was  still  the  sense  of  hav 
ing  come  too  late  —  yet  not  too  late,  after  all,  for  this  glimpse 
and  this  dream.  My  business  was  to  people  the  place  —  its  own 
business  had  never  been  to  save  us  the  trouble  of  understanding 
it.  And  then  the  deepest  spell  of  all  was  perhaps  that  just  here 
I  was  supremely  out  of  the  way  of  the  so  terribly  actual  Floren 
tine  question.  This,  as  all  the  world  knows,  is  a  battle-ground, 
to-day,  in  many  journals,  with  all  Italy  practically  pulling  on 
one  side  and  all  England,  America  and  Germany  pulling  on  the 
other :  I  speak  of  course  of  the  more  or  less  articulate  opinion. 
The  "improvement,"  the  rectification  of  Florence  is  in  the  air, 
and  the  problem  of  the  particular  ways  in  which,  given  such 
desperately  delicate  cases,  these  matters  should  be  understood. 
The  little  treasure-city  is,  if  there  ever  was  one,  a  delicate  case  — 
more  delicate  perhaps  than  any  other  in  the  world  save  that  of 
our  taking  on  ourselves  to  persuade  the  Italians  that  they  may  n't 
do  as  they  like  with  their  own.  They  so  absolutely  may  that  I 
profess  I  see  no  happy  issue  from  the  fight.  It  will  take  more 
tact  than  our  combined  tactful  genius  may  at  all  probably  muster 
to  convince  them  that  their  own  is,  by  an  ingenious  logic,  much 

[  104  ] 


TWO   OLD   HOUSES 

rather  ours.  It  will  take  more  subtlety  still  to  muster  for  them 
that  truly  dazzling  show  of  examples  from  which  they  may  learn 
that  what  in  general  is  "ours"  shall  appear  to  them  as  a  rule 
a  sacrifice  to  beauty  and  a  triumph  of  taste.  The  situation,  to 
the  truly  analytic  mind,  offers  in  short,  to  perfection,  all  the 
elements  of  despair ;  and  I  am  afraid  that  if  I  hung  back,  at  the 
Corsini  palace,  to  woo  illusions  and  invoke  the  irrelevant,  it  was 
because  I  could  think,  in  the  conditions,  of  no  better  way  to  meet 
the  acute  responsibility  of  the  critic  than  just  to  shirk  it. 

1899. 


CASA   ALVISI 


CASA   ALVISI 


INVITED  to  " introduce"  certain  pages 
of  cordial  and  faithful  reminiscence  from 
another  hand,1  in  which  a  frankly  pre 
dominant  presence  seems  to  live  again, 
I  undertook  that  office  with  an  interest 
inevitably  somewhat  sad  —  so  passed  and 
gone  to-day  is  so  much  of  the  life  sug 
gested.  Those  who  fortunately  knew 
Mrs.  Bronson  will  read  into  her  notes  still  more  of  it  —  more  of 
her  subject,  more  of  herself  too,  and  of  many  things  —  than 
she  gives,  and  some  may  well  even  feel  tempted  to  do  for  her 
what  she  has  done  here  for  her  distinguished  friend.  In  Venice, 
during  a  long  period,  for  many  pilgrims,  Mrs.  Arthur  Bronson, 
originally  of  New  York,  was,  so  far  as  society,  hospitality,  a 
charming  personal  welcome  were  concerned,  almost  in  sole  pos 
session  ;  she  had  become  there,  with  time,  quite  the  prime  repre 
sentative  of  those  private  amenities  which  the  Anglo-Saxon  abroad 
is  apt  to  miss  just  in  proportion  as  the  place  visited  is  publicly 
wonderful,  and  in  which  he  therefore  finds  a  value  twice  as  great 
as  at  home.  Mrs.  Bronson  really  earned  in  this  way  the  gratitude 
of  mingled  generations  and  races.  She  sat  for  twenty  years  at 

1  "  Browning  in  Venice,"  being  Recollections  of  the  late  Katharine  De  Kay 
Bronson,  with  a  Prefatory  Note  by  H.  J.  (Cornhill  Magazine,  February,  1902). 


ITALIAN  HOURS 

the  wide  mouth,  as  it  were,  of  the  Grand  Canal,  holding  out  her 
hand,  with  endless  good-nature,  patience,  charity,  to  all  decently 
accredited  petitioners,  the  incessant  troop  of  those  either  be- 
wilderedly  making  or  fondly  renewing  acquaintance  with  the 
dazzling  city. 

Casa  Alvisi  is  directly  opposite  the  high,  broad-based  florid 
church  of  S.  Maria  della  Salute  —  so  directly  that  from  the  bal 
cony  over  the  water-entrance  your  eye,  crossing  the  canal,  seems 
to  find  the  key-hole  of  the  great  door  right  in  a  line  with  it ;  and 
there  was  something  in  this  position  that  for  the  time  made  all 
Venice-lovers  think  of  the  genial  padrona  as  thus  levying  in  the 
most  convenient  way  the  toll  of  curiosity  and  sympathy.  Every 
one  passed,  every  one  was  seen  to  pass,  and  few  were  those  not 
seen  to  stop  and  to  return.  The  most  generous  of  hostesses  died 
a  year  ago  at  Florence;  her  house  knows  her  no  more  —  it  had 
ceased  to  do  so  for  some  time  before  her  death;  and  the  long, 
pleased  procession  —  the  charmed  arrivals,  the  happy  sojourns 
at  anchor,  the  reluctant  departures  that  made  Ca'  Alvisi,  as  was 
currently  said,  a  social  porto  di  mare  —  is,  for  remembrance  and 
regret,  already  a  possession  of  ghosts;  so  that,  on  the  spot,  at 
present,  the  attention  ruefully  averts  itself  from  the  dear  little 
old  faded  but  once  familiarly  bright  facade,  overtaken  at  last  by 
the  comparatively  vulgar  uses  that  are  doing  their  best  to  "paint 
out"  in  Venice,  right  and  left,  by  staring  signs  and  other  vul 
garities,  the  immemorial  note  of  distinction.  The  house,  in  a  city 
of  palaces,  was  small,  but  the  tenant  clung  to  her  perfect,  her 
inclusive  position  —  the  one  right  place  that  gave  her  a  better 

[no] 


LASA     AL\  Ihl,     VI. NICK. 


CASA  ALVISI 

command,  as  it  were,  than  a  better  house  obtained  by  a  harder 
compromise;  not  being  fond,  moreover,  of  spacious  halls  and 
massive  treasures,  but  of  compact  and  familiar  rooms,  in  which 
her  remarkable  accumulation  of  minute  and  delicate  Venetian 
objects  could  show.  She  adored  —  in  the  way  of  the  Venetian, 
to  which  all  her  taste  addressed  itself  —  the  small,  the  domestic 
and  the  exquisite ;  so  that  she  would  have  given  a  Tintoretto 
or  two,  I  think,  without  difficulty,  for  a  cabinet  of  tiny  gilded 
glasses  or  a  dinner-service  of  the  right  old  silver. 

The  general  receptacle  of  these  multiplied  treasures  played  at 
any  rate,  through  the  years,  the  part  of  a  friendly  private-box  at 
the  constant  operatic  show,  a  box  at  the  best  point  of  the  best 
tier,  with  the  cushioned  ledge  of  its  front  raking  the  whole  scene 
and  with  its  withdrawing  rooms  behind  for  more  detached  con 
versation;  for  easy  —  when  not  indeed  slightly  difficult  —  poly 
glot  talk,  artful  bibite,  artful  cigarettes  too,  straight  from  the 
hand  of  the  hostess,  who  could  do  all  that  belonged  to  a  hostess, 
place  people  in  relation  and  keep  them  so,  take  up  and  put  down 
the  topic,  cause  delicate  tobacco  and  little  gilded  glasses  to  cir 
culate,  without  ever  leaving  her  sofa-cushions  or  intermitting 
her  good-nature.  She  exercised  in  these  conditions,  with  never  a 
block,  as  we  say  in  London,  in  the  traffic,  with  never  an  admission, 
an  acceptance  of  the  least  social  complication,  her  positive  genius 
for  easy  interest,  easy  sympathy,  easy  friendship.  It  was  as  if, 
at  last,  she  had  taken  the  human  race  at  large,  quite  irrespective 
of  geography,  for  her  neighbours,  with  neighbourly  relations  as 
a  matter  of  course.  These  things,  on  her  part,  had  at  all  events  the 


ITALIAN  HOURS 

greater  appearance  of  ease  from  their  having  found  to  their  purpose 
—  and  as  if  the  very  air  of  Venice  produced  them  —  a  cluster  of 
forms  so  light  and  immediate,  so  pre-established  by  picturesque 
custom.  The  old  bright  tradition,  the  wonderful  Venetian  legend 
had  appealed  to  her  from  the  first,  closing  round  her  house  and 
her  well-plashed  water-steps,  where  the  waiting  gondolas  were 
thick,  quite  as  if,  actually,  the  ghost  of  the  defunct  Carnival  — 
since  I  have  spoken  of  ghosts  —  still  played  some  haunting  part. 
Let  me  add,  at  the  same  time,  that  Mrs.  Bronson's  social 
facility,  which  was  really  her  great  refuge  from  importunity,  a 
defence  with  serious  thought  and  serious  feeling  quietly  cher 
ished  behind  it,  had  its  discriminations  as  well  as  its  inveteracies, 
and  that  the  most  marked  of  all  these,  perhaps,  was  her  attach 
ment  to  Robert  Browning.  Nothing  in  all  her  beneficent  life  had 
probably  made  her  happier  than  to  have  found  herself  able  to 
minister,  each  year,  with  the  returning  autumn,  to  his  pleasure 
and  comfort.  Attached  to  Ca'  Alvisi,  on  the  land  side,  is  a  some 
what  melancholy  old  section  of  a  Giustiniani  palace,  which  she 
had  annexed  to  her  own  premises  mainly  for  the  purpose  of  plac 
ing  it,  in  comfortable  guise,  at  the  service  of  her  friends.  She 
liked,  as  she  professed,  when  they  were  the  real  thing,  to  have 
them  under  her  hand;  and  here  succeeded  each  other,  through 
the  years,  the  company  of  the  privileged  and  the  more  closely 
domesticated,  who  liked,  harmlessly,  to  distinguish  between 
themselves  and  outsiders.  Among  visitors  partaking  of  this 
pleasant  provision  Mr.  Browning  was  of  course  easily  first.  But 
I  must  leave  her  own  pen  to  show  him  as  her  best  years  knew 


CASA  ALVISI 

him.  The  point  was,  meanwhile,  that  if  her  charity  was  great 
even  for  the  outsider,  this  was  by  reason  of  the  inner  essence  of 
it  —  her  perfect  tenderness  for  Venice,  which  she  always  recog 
nised  as  a  link.  That  was  the  true  principle  of  fusion,  the  key 
to  communication.  She  communicated  in  proportion  —  little  or 
much,  measuring  it  as  she  felt  people  more  responsive  or  less  so ; 
and  she  expressed  herself,  or  in  other  words  her  full  affection  for 
the  place,  only  to  those  who  had  most  of  the  same  sentiment. 
The  rich  and  interesting  form  in  which  she  found  it  in  Browning 
may  well  be  imagined  —  together  with  the  quite  independent 
quantity  of  the  genial  at  large  that  she  also  found ;  but  I  am 
not  sure  that  his  favour  was  not  primarily  based  on  his  paid  trib 
ute  of  such  things  as  "Two  in  a  Gondola"  and  "A  Toccata  of 
Galuppi."  He  had  more  ineffaceably  than  any  one  recorded  his 
initiation  from  of  old. 

She  was  thus,  all  round,  supremely  faithful ;  yet  it  was  perhaps 
after  all  with  the  very  small  folk,  those  to  the  manner  born,  that 
she  made  the  easiest  terms.  She  loved,  she  had  from  the  first 
enthusiastically  adopted,  the  engaging  Venetian  people,  whose 
virtues  she  found  touching  and  their  infirmities  but  such  as  appeal 
mainly  to  the  sense  of  humour  and  the  love  of  anecdote ;  and  she 
befriended  and  admired,  she  studied  and  spoiled  them.  There 
must  have  been  a  multitude  of  whom  it  would  scarce  be  too  much 
to  say  that  her  long  residence  among  them  was  their  settled  golden 
age.  When  I  consider  that  they  have  lost  her  now  I  fairly  wonder 
to  what  shifts  they  have  been  put  and  how  long  they  may  not 
have  to  wait  for  such  an9ther  messenger  of  Providence.  She 

'  t  us] 


ITALIAN  HOURS 

cultivated  their  dialect,  she  renewed  their  boats,  she  piously  re 
lighted  —  at  the  top  of  the  tide-washed  pali  of  traghetto  or  lagoon 
—  the  neglected  lamp  of  the  tutelary  Madonnetta ;  she  took  cog 
nisance  of  the  wives,  the  children,  the  accidents,  the  troubles,  as 
to  which  she  became,  perceptibly,  the  most  prompt,  the  estab 
lished  remedy.  On  lines  where  the  amusement  was  happily  less 
one-sided  she  put  together  in  dialect  many  short  comedies,  dra 
matic  proverbs,  which,  with  one  of  her  drawing-rooms  perma 
nently  arranged  as  a  charming  diminutive  theatre,  she  caused  to 
be  performed  by  the  young  persons  of  her  circle  —  often,  when 
the  case  lent  itself,  by  the  wonderful  small  offspring  of  humbler 
friends,  children  of  the  Venetian  lower  class,  whose  aptitude, 
teachability,  drollery,  were  her  constant  delight.  It  was  certainly 
true  that  an  impression  of  Venice  as  humanly  sweet  might  easily 
found  itself  on  the  frankness  and  quickness  and  amiability  of  these 
little  people.  They  were  at  least  so  much  to  the  good ;  for  the  phi 
losophy  of  their  patroness  was  as  Venetian  as  everything  else; 
helping  her  to  accept  experience  without  bitterness  and  to  remain 
fresh,  even  in  the  fatigue  which  finally  overtook  her,  for  pleasant 
surprises  and  proved  sincerities.  She  was  herself  sincere  to  the 
last  for  the  place  of  her  predilection ;  inasmuch  as  though  she  had 
arranged  herself,  in  the  later  time  —  and  largely  for  the  love  of 
"Pippa  Passes"  —an  alternative  refuge  at  Asolo,  she  absented 
herself  from  Venice  with  continuity  only  under  coercion  of  illness. 
At  Asolo,  periodically,  the  link  with  Browning  was  more  con 
firmed  than  weakened,  and  there,  in  old  Venetian  territory,  and 
with  the  invasion  of  visitors  comparatively  checked,  her  prefer- 

[  114] 


CASA  ALVISI 

entially  small  house  became  again  a  setting  for  the  pleasure  of 
talk  and  the  sense  of  Italy.  It  contained  again  its  own  small 
treasures,  all  in  the  pleasant  key  of  the  homelier  Venetian  spirit. 
The  plain  beneath  it  stretched  away  like  a  purple  sea  from  the 
lower  cliffs  of  the  hills,  and  the  white  campanili  of  the  villages, 
as  one  was  perpetually  saying,  showed  on  the  expanse  like  scat 
tered  sails  of  ships.  The  rumbling  carriage,  the  old-time,  rattling, 
red-velveted  carriage  of  provincial,  rural  Italy,  delightful  and 
quaint,  did  the  office  of  the  gondola;  to  Bassano,  to  Treviso,  to 
high-walled  Castelfranco,  all  pink  and  gold,  the  home  of  the  great 
Giorgione.  Here  also  memories  cluster ;  but  it  is  in  Venice  again 
that  her  vanished  presence  is  most  felt,  for  there,  in  the  real,  or 
certainly  the  finer,  the  more  sifted  Cosmopolis,  it  falls  into  its 
place  among  the  others  evoked,  those  of  the  past  seekers  of  poetry 
and  dispensers  of  romance.  It  is  a  fact  that  almost  every  one  in 
teresting,  appealing,  melancholy,  memorable,  odd,  seems  at  one 
time  or  another,  after  many  days  and  much  life,  to  have  gravitated 
to  Venice  by  a  happy  instinct,  settling  in  it  and  treating  it,  cherish 
ing  it,  as  a  sort  of  repository  of  consolations ;  all  of  which  to-day, 
for  the  conscious  mind,  is  mixed  with  its  air  and  constitutes  its 
unwritten  history.  The  deposed,  the  defeated,  the  disenchanted, 
the  wounded,  or  even  only  the  bored,  have  seemed  to  find  there 
something  that  no  other  place  could  give.  But  such  people  came 
for  themselves,  as  we  seem  to  see  them  —  only  with  the  egotism 
of  their  grievances  and  the  vanity  of  their  hopes.  Mrs.  Bron- 
son's  case  was  beautifully  different  —  she  had  come  altogether 
for  others. 


FROM   CHAMBERY   TO   MILAN 


FROM  CHAMBERY  TO  MILAN 

)UR  truly  sentimental  tourist  will  never 
take  it  from  any  occasion  that  there  is 
absolutely  nothing  for  him,  and  it  was 
at  Chambery  —  but  four  hours  from  Ge 
neva —  that  I  accepted  the  situation  and 
decided  there  might  be  mysterious  de 
lights  in  entering  Italy  by  a  whizz  through 
an  eight-mile  tunnel,  even  as  a  bullet 
through  the  bore  of  a  gun.  I  found  my  reward  in  the  Savoyard 
landscape,  which  greets  you  betimes  with  the  smile  of  anticipa 
tion.  If  it  is  not  so  Italian  as  Italy  it  is  at  least  more  Italian 
than  anything  but  Italy  —  more  Italian,  too,  I  should  think,  than 
can  seem  natural  and  proper  to  the  swarming  red-legged  soldiery 
who  so  publicly  proclaim  it  of  the  empire  of  M.  Thiers.  The 
light  and  the  complexion  of  things  had  to  my  eyes  not  a  little 
of  that  mollified  depth  last  loved  by  them  rather  further  on.  It 
was  simply  perhaps  that  the  weather  was  hot  and  the  mountains 
drowsing  in  that  iridescent  haze  that  I  have  seen  nearer  home 
than  at  Chambery.  But  the  vegetation,  assuredly,  had  an  all 
but  Transalpine  twist  and  curl,  and  the  classic  wayside  tangle  of 
corn  and  vines  left  nothing  to  be  desired  in  the  line  of  careless 
grace.  Chambery  as  a  town,  however,  constitutes  no  foretaste 


ITALIAN   HOURS 

of  the  monumental  cities.  There  is  shabbiness  and  shabbiness, 
the  fond  critic  of  such  things  will  tell  you;  and  that  of  the 
ancient  capital  of  Savoy  lacks  style.  I  found  a  better  pastime, 
however,  than  strolling  through  the  dark  dull  streets  in  quest 
of  effects  that  were  not  forthcoming.  The  first  urchin  you  meet 
will  show  you  the  way  to  Les  Charmettes  and  the  Maison  Jean- 
Jacques.  A  very  pleasant  way  it  becomes  as  soon  as  it  leaves 
the  town  —  a  winding,  climbing  by-road,  bordered  with  such  a 
tall  and  sturdy  hedge  as  to  give  it  the  air  of  an  English  lane  — 
if  you  can  fancy  an  English  lane  introducing  you  to  the  haunts 
of  a  Madame  de  Warens. 

The  house  that  formerly  sheltered  this  lady's  singular  menage 
stands  on  a  hillside  above  the  road,  which  a  rapid  path  connects 
with  the  little  grass-grown  terrace  before  it.  It  is  a  small  shabby, 
homely  dwelling,  with  a  certain  reputable  solidity,  however,  and 
more  of  internal  spaciousness  than  of  outside  promise.  The 
place  is  shown  by  an  elderly  competent  dame  who  points  out 
the  very  few  surviving  objects  which  you  may  touch  with  the 
reflection  —  complacent  in  whatsoever  degree  suits  you  —  that 
they  have  known  the  familiarity  of  Rousseau's  hand.  It  was 
presumably  a  meagrely-appointed  house,  and  I  wondered  that 
on  such  scanty  features  so  much  expression  should  linger.  But 
the  structure  has  an  ancient  ponderosity,  and  the  dust  of  the 
eighteenth  century  seems  to  lie  on  its  worm-eaten  floors,  to  cling 
to  the  faded  old  papiers  a  ramages  on  the  walls  and  to  lodge  in 
the  crevices  of  the  brown  wooden  ceilings.  Madame  de  Warens's 
bed  remains,  with  the  narrow  couch  of  Jean-Jacques  as  well,  his 

[  120  ] 


FROM  CHAMB£RY  TO  MILAN 

little  warped  and  cracked  yellow  spinet,  and  a  battered,  turnip- 
shaped  silver  timepiece,  engraved  with  its  master's  name  —  its 
primitive  tick  as  extinct  as  his  passionate  heart-beats.  It  cost 
me,  I  confess,  a  somewhat  pitying  acceleration  of  my  own  to  see 
this  intimately  personal  relic  of  the  genius  loci  —  for  it  had  dwelt 
in  his  waistcoat-pocket,  than  which  there  is  hardly  a  mate 
rial  point  in  space  nearer  to  a  man's  consciousness  —  tossed  so 
irreverently  upon  the  table  on  which  you  deposit  your  fee,  beside 
the  dog's-eared  visitors'  record  or  livre  de  cuisine  recently  de 
nounced  by  Madame  George  Sand.  In  fact  the  place  generally, 
in  so  far  as  some  faint  ghostly  presence  of  its  famous  inmates 
seems  to  linger  there,  is  by  no  means  exhilarating.  Coppet  and 
Ferney  tell,  if  not  of  pure  happiness,  at  least  of  prosperity  and 
honour,  wealth  and  success.  But  Les  Charmettes  is  haunted  by 
ghosts  unclean  and  forlorn.  The  place  tells  of  poverty,  perver 
sity,  distress.  A  good  deal  of  clever  modern  talent  in  France  has 
been  employed  in  touching  up  the  episode  of  which  it  was  the 
scene  and  tricking  it  out  in  idyllic  love-knots.  But  as  I  stood  on 
the  charming  terrace  I  have  mentioned  —  a  little  jewel  of  a  ter 
race,  with  grassy  flags  and  a  mossy  parapet,  and  an  admirable 
view  of  great  swelling  violet  hills  —  stood  there  reminded  how 
much  sweeter  Nature  is  than  man,  the  story  looked  rather  wan 
and  unlovely  beneath  these  literary  decorations,  and  I  could  pay 
it  no  livelier  homage  than  is  implied  in  perfect  pity.  Hero  and 
heroine  have  become  too  much  creatures  of  history  to  take  up 
attitudes  as  part  of  any  poetry.  But,  not  to  mor  lise  too  sternly 
for  a  tourist  between  trains,  I  should  add  that,  as  an  illustration, 


ITALIAN  HOURS 

to  be  inserted  mentally  in  the  text  of  the  "Confessions,"  a  glimpse 
of  Les  Charmettes  is  pleasant  enough.  It  completes  the  rare 
charm  of  good  autobiography  to  behold  with  one's  eyes  the  faded 
and  battered  background  of  the  story ;  and  Rousseau's  narrative 
is  so  incomparably  vivid  and  forcible  that  the  sordid  little  house 
at  Chambery  seems  of  a  hardly  deeper  shade  of  reality  than  so 
many  other  passages  of  his  projected  truth. 

If  I  spent  an  hour  at  Les  Charmettes,  fumbling  thus  help 
lessly  with  the  past,  I  recognised  on  the  morrow  how  strongly 
the  Mont  Cenis  Tunnel  smells  of  the  time  to  come.  As  I  passed 
along  the  Saint-Gothard  highway  a  couple  of  months  since,  I 
perceived,  half  up  the  Swiss  ascent,  a  group  of  navvies  at  work 
in  a  gorge  beneath  the  road.  They  had  laid  bare  a  broad  sur 
face  of  granite  and  had  punched  in  the  centre  of  it  a  round  black 
cavity,  of  about  the  dimensions,  as  it  seemed  to  me,  of  a  soup- 
plate.  This  was  to  attain  its  perfect  development  some  eight  years 
hence.  The  Mont  Cenis  may  therefore  be  held  to  have  set  a 
fashion  which  will  be  followed  till  the  highest  Himalaya  is  but  the 
ornamental  apex  or  snow-capped  gable-tip  of  some  resounding 
fuliginous  corridor.  The  tunnel  differs  but  in  length  from  other 
tunnels ;  you  spend  half  an  hour  in  it.  But  you  whirl  out  into  the 
blest  peninsula,  and  as  you  look  back  seem  to  see  the  mighty  mass 
shrug  its  shoulders  over  the  line,  the  mere  turn  of  a  dreaming 
giant  in  his  sleep.  The  tunnel  is  certainly  not  a  poetic  object,  but 
there  is  no  perfection  without  its  beauty ;  and  as  you  measure 
the  long  rugged  outline  of  the  pyramid  of  which  it  forms  the  base 
you  accept  it  as  the  perfection  of  a  short  cut.  Twenty-four  hours 


FROM   CHAMBERY   TO   MILAN 

from  Paris  to  Turin  is  speed  for  the  times  —  speed  which  may 
content  us,  at  any  rate,  until  expansive  Berlin  has  succeeded  in 
placing  itself  at  thirty-six  from  Milan. 

To  enter  Turin  then  of  a  lovely  August  afternoon  was  to  find 
a  city  of  arcades,  of  pink  and  yellow  stucco,  of  innumerable 
cafes,  of  blue-legged  officers,  of  ladies  draped  in  the  North-Ital 
ian  mantilla.  An  old  friend  of  Italy  coming  back  to  her  finds  an 
easy  waking  for  dormant  memories.  Every  object  is  a  reminder 
and  every  reminder  a  thrill.  Half  an  hour  after  my  arrival,  as  I 
stood  at  my  window,  which  overhung  the  great  square,  I  found 
the  scene,  within  and  without,  a  rough  epitome  of  every  pleasure 
and  every  impression  I  had  formerly  gathered  from  Italy:  the 
balcony  and  the  Venetian-blind,  the  cool  floor  of  speckled  con 
crete,  the  lavish  delusions  of  frescoed  wall  and  ceiling,  the  broad 
divan  framed  for  the  noonday  siesta,  the  massive  mediaeval  Cas- 
tello  in  mid-piazza,  with  its  shabby  rear  and  its  pompous  Pal- 
ladian  front,  the  brick  campaniles  beyond,  the  milder,  yellower 
light,  the  range  of  colour,  the  suggestion  of  sound.  Later,  beneath 
the  arcades,  I  found  many  an  old  acquaintance :  beautiful  offi 
cers,  resplendent,  slow-strolling,  contemplative  of  female  beauty ; 
civil  and  peaceful  dandies,  hardly  less  gorgeous,  with  that  reli 
gious  faith  in  moustache  and  shirt-front  which  distinguishes  the 
belle  jeunesse  of  Italy;  ladies  with  heads  artfully  shawled  in  Span 
ish-looking  lace,  but  with  too  little  art  —  or  too  much  nature 
at  least  —  in  the  region  of  the  bodice ;  well-conditioned  young 
abbati  with  neatly  drawn  stockings.  These  indeed  are  not  ob 
jects  of  first-rate  interest,  and  with  such  Turin  is  rather  meagrely 

[  123  ] 


ITALIAN   HOURS 

furnished.  It  has  no  architecture,  no  churches,  no  monuments, 
no  romantic  street-scenery.  It  has  the  great  votive  temple  of  the 
Superga,  which  stands  on  a  high  hilltop  above  the  city,  gazing 
across  at  Monte  Rosa  and  lifting  its  own  fine  dome  against 
the  sky  with  no  contemptible  art.  But  when  you  have  seen  the 
Superga  from  the  quay  beside  the  Po,  a  skein  of  a  few  yellow 
threads  in  August,  despite  its  frequent  habit  of  rising  high  and 
running  wild,  and  said  to  yourself  that  in  architecture  position  is 
half  the  battle,  you  have  nothing  left  to  visit  but  the  Museum  of 
pictures.  The  Turin  Gallery,  which  is  large  and  well  arranged, 
is  the  fortunate  owner  of  three  or  four  masterpieces:  a  couple  of 
magnificent  Vandycks  and  a  couple  of  Paul  Veroneses ;  the  latter 
a  Queen  of  Sheba  and  a  Feast  of  the  House  of  Levi  —  the  usual 
splendid  combination  of  brocades,  grandees  and  marble  colon 
nades  dividing  those  skies  de  turquoise  malade  to  which  Theophile 
Gautier  is  fond  of  alluding.  The  Veroneses  are  fine,  but  with 
Venice  in  prospect  the  traveller  feels  at  liberty  to  keep  his  best 
attention  in  reserve.  If,  however,  he  has  the  proper  relish  for 
Vandyck,  let  him  linger  long  and  fondly  here;  for  that  admira 
tion  will  never  be  more  potently  stirred  than  by  the  adorable 
group  of  the  three  little  royal  highnesses,  sons  and  the  daugh 
ter  of  Charles  I.  All  the  purity  of  childhood  is  here,  and  all  its 
soft  solidity  of  structure,  rounded  tenderly  beneath  the  spangled 
satin  and  contrasted  charmingly  with  the  pompous  rigidity.  Clad 
respectively  in  crimson,  white  and  blue,  these  small  scions  stand 
up  in  their  ruffs  and  fardingales  in  dimpled  serenity,  squaring 
their  infantine  stomachers  at  the  spectator  with  an  innocence, 

1 124] 


FROM   CHAMBERY  TO   MILAN 

a  dignity,  a  delightful  grotesqueness,  which  make  the  picture  a 
thing  of  close  truth  as  well  as  of  fine  decorum.  You  might  kiss 
their  hands,  but  you  certainly  would  think  twice  before  pinch 
ing  their  cheeks  —  provocative  as  they  are  of  this  tribute  of  admi 
ration — and  would  altogether  lack  presumption  to  lift  them  off 
the  ground  or  the  higher  level  or  dais  on  which  they  stand  so 
sturdily  planted  by  right  of  birth.  There  is  something  inimitable 
in  the  paternal  gallantry  with  which  the  painter  has  touched  off 
the  young  lady.  She  was  a  princess,  yet  she  was  a  baby,  and  he 
has  contrived,  we  let  ourselves  fancy,  to  interweave  an  intimation 
that  she  was  a  creature  whom,  in  her  teens,  the  lucklessly  smitten 
—  even  as  he  was  prematurely  —  must  vainly  sigh  for.  Though 
the  work  is  a  masterpiece  of  execution  its  merits  under  this  head 
may  be  emulated,  at  a  distance ;  the  lovely  modulations  of  col 
our  in  the  three  contrasted  and  harmonised  little  satin  petticoats, 
the  solidity  of  the  little  heads,  in  spite  of  all  their  prettiness,  the 
happy,  unexaggerated  squareness  and  maturity  of  pose,  are,  sev 
erally,  points  to  study,  to  imitate,  and  to  reproduce  with  profit. 
But  the  taste  of  such  a  consummate  thing  is  its  great  secret  as 
well  as  its  great  merit  —  a  taste  which  seems  one  of  the  lost 
instincts  of  mankind.  Go  and  enjoy  this  supreme  expression  of 
Vandyck's  fine  sense,  and  admit  that  never  was  a  politer  pro 
duction. 

Milan  speaks  to  us  of  a  burden  of  felt  life  of  which  Turin  is 
innocent,  but  in  its  general  aspect  still  lingers  a  northern  reserve 
which  makes  the  place  rather  perhaps  the  last  of  the  prose  capi 
tals  than  the  first  of  the  poetic.  The  long  Austrian  occupation 

1 125] 


ITALIAN  HOURS 

perhaps  did  something  to  Germanise  its  physiognomy;  though 
indeed  this  is  an  indifferent  explanation  when  one  remembers 
how  well,  temperamentally  speaking,  Italy  held  her  own  in  Vene- 
tia.  Milan,  at  any  rate,  if  not  bristling  with  the  aesthetic  impulse, 
opens  to  us  frankly  enough  the  thick  volume  of  her  past.  Of  that 
volume  the  Cathedral  is  the  fairest  and  fullest  page — a  struc 
ture  not  supremely  interesting,  not  logical,  not  even,  to  some  minds, 
commandingly  beautiful,  but  grandly  curious  and  superbly  rich. 
I  hope,  for  my  own  part,  never  to  grow  too  particular  to  admire 
it.  If  it  had  no  other  distinction  it  would  still  have  that  of  im 
pressive,  immeasurable  achievement.  As  I  strolled  beside  its  vast 
indented  base  one  evening,  and  felt  it,  above  me,  rear  its  grey 
mysteries  into  the  starlight  while  the  restless  human  tide  on  which 
I  floated  rose  no  higher  than  the  first  few  layers  of  street-soiled 
marble,  I  was  tempted  to  believe  that  beauty  in  great  architec 
ture  is  almost  a  secondary  merit,  and  that  the  main  point  is  mass 
—  such  mass  as  may  make  it  a  supreme  embodiment  of  vigorous 
effort.  Viewed  in  this  way  a  great  building  is  the  greatest  con 
ceivable  work  of  art.  More  than  any  other  it  represents  difficul 
ties  mastered,  resources  combined,  labour,  courage  and  patience. 
And  there  are  people  who  tell  us  that  art  has  nothing  to  do  with 
morality!  Little  enough,  doubtless,  when  it  is  concerned,  even 
ever  so  little,  in  painting  the  roof  of  Milan  Cathedral  within  to 
represent  carved  stone-work.  Of  this  famous  roof  every  one  has 
heard  —  how  good  it  is,  how  bad,  how  perfect  a  delusion,  how 
transparent  an  artifice.  It  is  the  first  thing  your  cicerone  shows 
you  on  entering  the  church.  The  occasionally  accommodating 

[  126] 


••••••i 


THE     SlMl'I.O.N     GATK,     MILAN". 


FROM   CHAMBfcRY   TO   MILAN 

art-lover  may  accept  it  philosophically,  I  think ;  for  the  interior, 
though  admirably  effective  as  a  whole,  has  no  great  sublimity, 
nor  even  purity,  of  pitch.  It  is  splendidly  vast  and  dim ;  the  altar- 
lamps  twinkle  afar  through  the  incense-thickened  air  like  fog- 
lights  at  sea,  and  the  great  columns  rise  straight  to  the  roof,  which 
hardly  curves  to  meet  them,  with  the  girth  and  altitude  of  oaks 
of  a  thousand  years;  but  there  is  little  refinement  of  design — few 
of  those  felicities  of  proportion  which  the  eye  caresses,  when  it 
finds  them,  very  much  as  the  memory  retains  and  repeats  some 
happy  lines  of  poetry  or  some  haunting  musical  phrase.  Con 
sistently  brave,  none  the  less,  is  the  result  produced,  and  nothing 
braver  than  a  certain  exhibition  that  I  privately  enjoyed  of  the 
relics  of  St.  Charles  Borromeus.  This  holy  man  lies  at  his  eter 
nal  rest  in  a  small  but  gorgeous  sepulchral  chapel,  beneath  the 
boundless  pavement  and  before  the  high  altar ;  and  for  the  mod 
est  sum  of  five  francs  you  may  have  his  shrivelled  mortality 
unveiled  and  gaze  at  it  with  whatever  reserves  occur  to  you.  The 
Catholic  Church  never  renounces  a  chance  of  the  sublime  for 
fear  of  a  chance  of  the  ridiculous  —  especially  when  the  chance 
of  the  sublime  may  be  the  very  excellent  chance  of  five  francs. 
The  performance  in  question,  of  which  the  good  San  Carlo  paid 
in  the  first  instance  the  cost,  was  impressive  certainly,  but  as 
a  monstrous  matter  or  a  grim  comedy  may  still  be.  The  little 
sacristan,  having  secured  his  audience,  whipped  on  a  white  tunic 
over  his  frock,  lighted  a  couple  of  extra  candles  and  proceeded 
to  remove  from  above  the  altar,  by  means  of  a  crank,  a  sort  of 
sliding  shutter,  just  as  you  may  see  a  shop-boy  do  of  a  morning 

1 127  ] 


ITALIAN  HOURS 

at  his  master's  window.  In  this  case  too  a  large  sheet  of  plate- 
glass  was  uncovered,  and  to  form  an  idea  of  the  etalage  you  must 
imagine  that  a  jeweller,  for  reasons  of  his  own,  has  struck  an  un 
natural  partnership  with  an  undertaker.  The  black  mummified 
corpse  of  the  saint  is  stretched  out  in  a  glass  coffin,  clad  in  his 
mouldering  canonicals,  mitred,  crosiered  and  gloved,  glittering 
with  votive  jewels.  It  is  an  extraordinary  mixture  of  death  and 
life;  the  desiccated  clay,  the  ashen  rags,  the  hideous  little  black 
mask  and  skull,  and  the  living,  glowing,  twinkling  splendour  of 
diamonds,  emeralds  and  sapphires.  The  collection  is  really  fine, 
and  many  great  historic  names  are  attached  to  the  different 
offerings.  Whatever  may  be  the  better  opinion  as  to  the  future 
of  the  Church,  I  can't  help  thinking  she  will  make  a  figure  in  the 
world  so  long  as  she  retains  this  great  fund  of  precious  "proper 
ties,"  this  prodigious  capital  decoratively  invested  and  scintillat 
ing  throughout  Christendom  at  effectively-scattered  points.  You 
see  I  am  forced  to  agree  after  all,  in  spite  of  the  sliding  shutter 
and  the  profane  swagger  of  the  sacristan,  that  a  certain  pastoral 
majesty  saved  the  situation,  or  at  least  made  irony  gape.  Yet  it 
was  from  a  natural  desire  to  breathe  a  sweeter  air  that  I  imme 
diately  afterwards  undertook  the  interminable  climb  to  the  roof 
of  the  cathedral.  This  is  another  world  of  wonders,  and  one 
which  enjoys  due  renown,  every  square  inch  of  wall  on  the  wind 
ing  stairways  being  bescribbled  with  a  traveller's  name.  There 
is  a  great  glare  from  the  far-stretching  slopes  of  marble,  a  con 
fusion  (like  the  masts  of  a  navy  or  the  spears  of  an  army)  of 
image-capped  pinnacles,  biting  the  impalpable  blue,  and,  better 

[   128  ] 


FROM   CHAMBERY  TO   MILAN 

than  either,  the  goodliest  view  of  level  Lombardy  sleeping  in  its 
rich  transalpine  light  and  resembling,  with  its  white-walled  dwell 
ings  and  the  spires  on  its  horizon,  a  vast  green  sea  spotted  with 
ships.  After  two  months  of  Switzerland  the  Lombard  plain  is 
a  rich  rest  to  the  eye,  and  the  yellow,  liquid,  free-flowing  light 
—  as  if  on  favoured  Italy  the  vessels  of  heaven  were  more  widely 
opened  —  had  for  mine  a  charm  which  made  me  think  of  a  great 
opaque  mountain  as  a  blasphemous  invasion  of  the  atmospheric 
spaces. 

I  have  mentioned  the  cathedral  first,  but  the  prime  treasure 
of  Milan  at  the  present  hour  is  the  beautiful,  tragical  Leonardo. 
The  cathedral  is  good  for  another  thousand  years,  but  we  ask 
whether  our  children  will  find  in  the  most  majestic  and  most 
luckless  of  frescoes  much  more  than  the  shadow  of  a  shadow. 
Its  fame  has  been  for  a  century  or  two  that,  as  one  may  say,  of 
an  illustrious  invalid  whom  people  visit  to  see  how  he  lasts,  with 
leave-taking  sighs  and  almost  death-bed  or  tiptoe  precautions. 
The  picture  needs  not  another  scar  or  stain,  now,  to  be  the  sad 
dest  work  of  art  in  the  world;  and  battered,  defaced,  ruined  as 
it  is,  it  remains  one  of  the  greatest.  We  may  really  compare  its 
anguish  of  decay  to  the  slow  conscious  ebb  of  life  in  a  human 
organism.  The  production  of  the  prodigy  was  a  breath  from 
the  infinite,  and  the  painter's  conception  not  immeasurably  less 
complex  than  the  scheme,  say,  of  his  own  mortal  constitution. 
There  has  been  much  talk  lately  of  the  irony  of  fate,  but  I  sus 
pect  fate  was  never  more  ironical  than  when  she  led  the  most 
scientific,  the  most  calculating  of  all  painters  to  spend  fifteen 

•'  1 129 1 


ITALIAN   HOURS 

long  years  in  building  his  goodly  house  upon  the  sand.  And 
yet,  after  all,  may  not  the  playing  of  that  trick  represent  but  a 
deeper  wisdom,  since  if  the  thing  enjoyed  the  immortal  health 
and  bloom  of  a  first-rate  Titian  we  should  have  lost  one  of  the 
most  pertinent  lessons  in  the  history  of  art  ?  We  know  it  as 
hearsay,  but  here  is  the  plain  proof,  that  there  is  no  limit  to  the 
amount  of  "stuff"  an  artist  may  put  into  his  work.  Every  painter 
ought  once  in  his  life  to  stand  before  the  Cenacolo  and  decipher 
its  moral.  Mix  with  your  colours  and  mess  on  your  palette  every 
particle  of  the  very  substance  of  your  soul,  and  this  lest  per 
chance  your  "prepared  surface"  shall  play  you  a  trick!  Then, 
and  then  only,  it  will  fight  to  the  last  —  it  will  resist  even  in 
death.  Raphael  was  a  happier  genius;  you  look  at  his  lovely 
"Marriage  of  the  Virgin"  at  the  Brera,  beautiful  as  some  first 
deep  smile  of  conscious  inspiration,  but  to  feel  that  he  foresaw  no 
complaint  against  fate,  and  that  he  knew  the  world  he  wanted 
to  know  and  charmed  it  into  never  giving  him  away.  But  I  have 
left  no  space  to  speak  of  the  Brera,  nor  of  that  paradise  of  book 
worms  with  an  eye  for  their  background  —  if  such  creatures 
exist  —  the  Ambrosian  Library ;  nor  of  that  mighty  basilica  of 
St.  Ambrose,  with  its  spacious  atrium  and  its  crudely  solemn 
mosaics,  in  which  it  is  surely  your  own  fault  if  you  don't  forget 
Dr.  Strauss  and  M.  Renan  and  worship  as  grimly  as  a  Christian 
of  the  ninth  century. 

It  is  part  of  the  sordid  prose  of  the  Mont  Cenis  road  that, 
unlike  those  fine  old  unimproved  passes,  the  Simplon,  the  Spliigen 
and  —  yet  awhile  longer  —  the  Saint-Gothard,  it  denies  you  a 


FROM   CHAMBERY   TO   MILAN 

glimpse  of  that  paradise  adorned  by  the  four  lakes  even  as  that 
of  uncommented  Scripture  by  the  rivers  of  Eden.  I  made,  how 
ever,  an  excursion  to  the  Lake  of  Como,  which,  though  brief, 
lasted  long  enough  to  suggest  to  me  that  I  too  was  a  hero  of 
romance  with  leisure  for  a  love-affair,  and  not  a  hurrying  tourist 
with  a  Bradshaw  in  his  pocket.  The  Lake  of  Como  has  figured 
largely  in  novels  of  ''immoral"  tendency  —  being  commonly  the 
spot  to  which  inflamed  young  gentlemen  invite  the  wives  of  other 
gentlemen  to  fly  with  them  and  ignore  the  restrictions  of  public 
opinion.  But  even  the  Lake  of  Como  has  been  revised  and  im 
proved  ;  the  fondest  prejudices  yield  to  time ;  it  gives  one  some 
how  a  sense  of  an  aspiringly  high  tone.  I  should  pay  a  poor 
compliment  at  least  to  the  swarming  inmates  of  the  hotels  which 
now  alternate  attractively  by  the  water-side  with  villas  old  and 
new  were  I  to  read  the  appearances  more  cynically.  But  if  it 
is  lost  to  florid  fiction  it  still  presents  its  blue  bosom  to  most 
other  refined  uses,  and  the  unsophisticated  tourist,  the  American 
at  least,  may  do  any  amount  of  private  romancing  there.  The 
pretty  hotel  at  Cadenabbia  offers  him,  for  instance,  in  the  most 
elegant  and  assured  form,  the  so  often  precarious  adventure  of 
what  he  calls  at  home  summer  board.  It  is  all  so  unreal,  so  ficti 
tious,  so  elegant  and  idle,  so  framed  to  undermine  a  rigid  sense  of 
the  chief  end  of  man  not  being  to  float  for  ever  in  an  ornamental 
boat,  beneath  an  awning  tasselled  like  a  circus-horse,  impelled 
by  an  affable  Giovanni  or  Antonio  from  one  stately  stretch  of 
lake-laved  villa  steps  to  another,  that  departure  seems  as  harsh 
and  unnatural  as  the  dream-dispelling  note  of  some  punctual 


ITALIAN  HOURS 

voice  at  your  bedside  on  a  dusky  winter  morning.  Yet  I  won 
dered,  for  my  own  part,  where  I  had  seen  it  all  before — the  pink- 
walled  villas  gleaming  through  their  shrubberies  of  orange  and 
oleander,  the  mountains  shimmering  in  the  hazy  light  like  so 
many  breasts  of  doves,  the  constant  presence  of  the  melodious 
Italian  voice.  Where  indeed  but  at  the  Opera  when  the  man 
ager  has  been  more  than  usually  regardless  of  expense  ?  Here  in 
the  foreground  was  the  palace  of  the  nefarious  barytone,  with 
its  banqueting-hall  opening  as  freely  on  the  stage  as  a  railway 
buffet  on  the  platform;  beyond,  the  delightful  back  scene,  with 
its  operatic  gamut  of  colouring ;  in  the  middle  the  scarlet-sashed 
barcaiuoli,  grouped  like  a  chorus,  hat  in  hand,  awaiting  the 
conductor's  signal.  It  was  better  even  than  being  in  a  novel  — 
this  being,  this  fairly  wallowing,  in  a  libretto. 


THE   OLD   SAINT-GOTHARD 

LEAVES  FROM   A   NOTE-BOOK 


THE  OLD  SAINT-GOTHARD 

LEAVES  FROM  A  NOTE-BOOK 

|ERNE,  September,  1873. — In  Berne  again, 
some  eleven  weeks  after  having  left  it  in 
July.  I  have  never  been  in  Switzerland  so 
late,  and  I  came  hither  innocently  suppos 
ing  the  last  Cook's  tourist  to  have  paid 
out  his  last  coupon  and  departed.  But  I 
was  lucky,  it  seems,  to  discover  an  empty 
cot  in  an  attic  and  a  very  tight  place  at 
a  table  d'hote.  People  are  all  flocking  out  of  Switzerland,  as  in 
July  they  were  flocking  in,  and  the  main  channels  of  egress  are 
terribly  choked.  I  have  been  here  several  days,  watching  them 
come  and  go ;  it  is  like  the  march-past  of  an  army.  It  gives  one, 
for  an  occasional  change  from  darker  thoughts,  a  lively  impres 
sion  of  the  numbers  of  people  now  living,  and  above  all  now 
moving,  at  extreme  ease  in  the  world.  Here  is  little  Switzerland 
disgorging  its  tens  of  thousands  of  honest  folk,  chiefly  English, 
and  rarely,  to  judge  by  their  faces  and  talk,  children  of  light 
in  any  eminent  degree ;  for  whom  snow-peaks  and  glaciers  and 
passes  and  lakes  and  chalets  and  sunsets  and  a  cafe  complet, 
"including  honey,"  as  the  coupon  says,  have  become  prime 

[  w] 


ITALIAN  HOURS 

necessities  for  six  weeks  every  year.    It's  not  so  long  ago  that 
lords  and  nabobs  monopolised  these  pleasures;  but  nowadays 
a  month's  tour  in  Switzerland  is  no  more  a  jeu  de  prince  than 
a  Sunday  excursion.  To  watch  this  huge  Anglo-Saxon  wave  ebb 
ing  through  Berne  suggests,  no  doubt  most  fallaciously,  that  the 
common  lot  of  mankind  is  n't  after  all  so  very  hard  and  that  the 
masses  have  reached  a  high  standard  of  comfort.   The  view  of 
the  Oberland  chain,  as  you  see  it  from  the  garden  of  the  hotel, 
really  butters  one's  bread  most  handsomely ;  and  here  are  I  don't 
know  how  many  hundred  Cook's  tourists  a  day  looking  at  it 
through  the  smoke  of  their  pipes.   Is  it  really  the  "masses,"  how 
ever,  that  I  see  every  day  at  the  table  d'hote  ?  They  have  rather  too 
few  h's  to  the  dozen,  but  their  good-nature  is  great.  Some  people 
complain  that  they  "vulgarise"  Switzerland;  but  as  far  as  I  am 
concerned  I  freely  give  it  up  to  them  and  offer  them  a  personal 
welcome  and  take  a  peculiar  satisfaction  in  seeing  them  here. 
Switzerland  is  a  "show  country"   - 1  am  more  and  more  struck 
with  the  bearings  of  that  truth;  and  its  use  in  the  world  is  to 
reassure  persons  of  a  benevolent  imagination  when  they  begin 
to  wish  for  the  drudging  millions  a  greater  supply  of  elevating 
amusement.    Here  is  amusement  for  a  thousand  years,  and  as 
elevating  certainly  as  mountains  three  miles  high  can  make  it. 
I  expect  to  live  to  see  the  summit  of  Monte  Rosa  heated  by 
steam-tubes  and  adorned  with  a  hotel  setting  three  tables  d'hote 
a  day. 

I  have  been  walking  about  the  arcades,  which  used  to  bestow 
a  grateful  shade  in  July,  but  which  seem  rather  dusky  and  chilly 

[  136] 


V     ( 

*• 


THK     CLOCK     TOWKK,     HKKNK. 


THE   OLD   SAINT-GOTHARD 

in  these  shortening  autumn  days.  I  am  struck  with  the  way 
the  English  always  speak  of  them  —  with  a  shudder,  as  gloomy, 
as  dirty,  as  evil-smelling,  as  suffocating,  as  freezing,  as  anything 
and  everything  but  admirably  picturesque.  I  take  us  Americans 
for  the  only  people  who,  in  travelling,  judge  things  on  the  first 
impulse  —  when  we  do  judge  them  at  all  —  not  from  the  stand 
point  of  simple  comfort.  Most  of  us,  strolling  forth  into  these 
bustling  basements,  are,  I  imagine,  too  much  amused,  too  much 
diverted  from  the  sense  of  an  alienable  right  to  public  ease,  to 
be  conscious  of  heat  or  cold,  of  thick  air,  or  even  of  the  universal 
smell  of  strong  charcuterie.  If  the  visible  romantic  were  banished 
from  the  face  of  the  earth  I  am  sure  the  idea  of  it  would  still 
survive  in  some  typical  American  heart.  .  .  . 

Lucerne,  September.  — •  Berne,  I  find,  has  been  filling  with 
tourists  at  the  expense  of  Lucerne,  which  I  have  been  having 
almost  to  myself.  There  are  six  people  at  the  table  d'hote;  the 
excellent  dinner  denotes  on  the  part  of  the  chef  the  easy  leisure 
in  which  true  artists  love  to  work.  The  waiters  have  nothing  to 
do  but  lounge  about  the  hall  and  chink  in  their  pockets  the  fees 
of  the  past  season.  The  day  has  been  lovely  in  itself,  and  per 
vaded,  to  my  sense,  by  the  gentle  glow  of  a  natural  satisfaction 
at  my  finding  myself  again  on  the  threshold  of  Italy.  I  am  lodged 
en  prince,  in  a  room  with  a  balcony  hanging  over  the  lake  — 
a  balcony  on  which  I  spent  a  long  time  this  morning  at  dawn, 
thanking  the  mountain-tops,  from  the  depths  of  a  landscape- 
lover's  heart,  for  their  promise  of  superbly  fair  weather.  There 
were  a  great  many  mountain-tops  to  thank,  for  the  crags  and 

'   1 137 1 


ITALIAN  HOURS 

peaks  and  pinnacles  tumbled  away  through  the  morning  mist  in 
an  endless  confusion  of  grandeur.  I  have  been  all  day  in  better 
humour  with  Lucerne  than  ever  before  —  a  forecast  reflection  of 
Italian  moods.  If  Switzerland,  as  I  wrote  the  other  day,  is  so 
furiously  a  show-place,  Lucerne  is  certainly  one  of  the  biggest 
booths  at  the  fair.  The  little  quay,  under  the  trees,  squeezed  in 
between  the  decks  of  the  steamboats  and  the  doors  of  the  hotels, 
is  a  terrible  medley  of  Saxon  dialects  —  a  jumble  of  pilgrims  in 
all  the  phases  of  devotion,  equipped  with  book  and  staff,  alpen 
stock  and  Baedeker.  There  are  so  many  hotels  and  trinket-shops, 
so  many  omnibuses  and  steamers,  so  many  Saint-Gothard  vet- 
turini,  so  many  ragged  urchins  poking  photographs,  minerals 
and  Lucernese  English  at  you,  that  you  feel  as  if  lake  and  moun 
tains  themselves,  in  all  their  loveliness,  were  but  a  part  of  the 
"enterprise"  of  landlords  and  pedlars,  and  half  expect  to  see 
the  Righi  and  Pilatus  and  the  fine  weather  figure  as  items  on 
your  hotel-bill  between  the  bougie  and  the  siphon.  Nature  her 
self  assists  you  to  this  conceit;  there  is  something  so  operatic 
and  suggestive  of  footlights  and  scene-shifters  in  the  view  on 
which  Lucerne  looks  out.  You  are  one  of  five  thousand  —  fifty 
thousand  —  "accommodated"  spectators;  you  have  taken  your 
season-ticket  and  there  is  a  responsible  impresario  somewhere 
behind  the  scenes.  There  is  such  a  luxury  of  beauty  in  the  pros 
pect  —  such  a  redundancy  of  composition  and  effect  —  so  many 
more  peaks  and  pinnacles  than  are  needed  to  make  one  heart 
happy  or  regale  the  vision  of  one  quiet  observer,  that  you  finally 
accept  the  little  Babel  on  the  quay  and  the  looming  masses  in  the 

1 138] 


THE   OLD   SAINT-GOTHARD 

clouds  as  equal  parts  of  a  perfect  system,  and  feel  as  if  the  moun 
tains  had  been  waiting  so  many  ages  for  the  hotels  to  come  and 
balance  the  colossal  group,  that  they  show  a  right,  after  all,  to 
have  them  big  and  numerous.  The  scene-shifters  have  been  at 
work  all  day  long,  composing  and  discomposing  the  beautiful 
background  of  the  prospect  —  massing  the  clouds  and  scatter 
ing  the  light,  effacing  and  reviving,  making  play  with  their  won 
derful  machinery  of  mist  and  haze.  The  mountains  rise,  one 
behind  the  other,  in  an  enchanting  gradation  of  distances  and 
of  melting  blues  and  greys ;  you  think  each  successive  tone  the 
loveliest  and  haziest  possible  till  you  see  another  loom  dimly 
behind  it.  I  could  n't  enjoy  even  The  Swiss  Times,  over  my  break 
fast,  till  I  had  marched  forth  to  the  office  of  the  Saint-Gothard 
service  of  coaches  and  demanded  the  banquette  for  to-morrow. 
The  one  place  at  the  disposal  of  the  office  was  taken,  but  I  might 
possibly  rn  entendre  with  the  conductor  for  his  own  seat  —  the 
conductor  being  generally  visible,  in  the  intervals  of  business,  at 
the  post-office.  To  the  post-office,  after  breakfast,  I  repaired, 
over  the  fine  new  bridge  which  now  spans  the  green  Reuss  and 
gives  such  a  woeful  air  of  country-cousinship  to  the  crooked  old 
wooden  structure  which  did  sole  service  when  I  was  here  four 
years  ago.  The  old  bridge  is  covered  with  a  running  hood  of 
shingles  and  adorned  with  a  series  of  very  quaint  and  vivid  little 
paintings  of  the  ''Dance  of  Death,"  quite  in  the  Holbein  manner; 
the  new  sends  up  a  painful  glare  from  its  white  limestone,  and  is 
ornamented  with  candelabra  in  a  meretricious  imitation  of  plati 
num.  As  an  almost  professional  cherisher  of  the  quaint  I  ought 


ITALIAN  HOURS 

to  have  chosen  to  return  at  least  by  the  dark  and  narrow  way ; 
but  mark  how  luxury  unmans  us.  I  was  already  demoralised. 
I  crossed  the  threshold  of  the  timbered  portal,  took  a  few  steps, 
and  retreated.  It  smelt  badly!  So  I  marched  back,  counting  the 
lamps  in  their  fine  falsity.  But  the  other,  the  crooked  and  covered 
way,  smelt  very  badly  indeed ;  and  no  good  American  is  without 
a  fund  of  accumulated  sensibility  to  the  odour  of  stale  timber. 

Meanwhile  I  had  spent  an  hour  in  the  great  yard  of  the  post- 
office,  waiting  for  my  conductor  to  turn  up  and  seeing  the  yellow 
malles-postes  pushed  to  and  fro.  At  last,  being  told  my  man 
was  at  my  service,  I  was  brought  to  speech  of  a  huge,  jovial, 
bearded,  delightful  Italian,  clad  in  the  blue  coat  and  waistcoat, 
with  close,  round  silver  buttons,  which  are  a  heritage  of  the  old 
postilions.  No,  it  was  not  he ;  it  was  a  friend  of  his ;  and  finally 
the  friend  was  produced,  en  costume  de  ville,  but  equally  jovial, 
and  Italian  enough  —  a  brave  Lucernese,  who  had  spent  half 
of  his  life  between  Bellinzona  and  Camerlata.  For  ten  francs 
this  worthy  man's  perch  behind  the  luggage  was  made  mine  as 
far  as  Bellinzona,  and  we  separated  with  reciprocal  wishes  for 
good  weather  on  the  morrow.  To-morrow  is  so  manifestly  deter 
mined  to  be  as  fine  as  any  other  3oth  of  September  since  the 
weather  became  on  this  planet  a  topic  of  conversation  that  I 
have  had  nothing  to  do  but  stroll  about  Lucerne,  staring,  loafing 
and  vaguely  intent  on  regarding  the  fact  that,  whatever  happens, 
my  place  is  paid  to  Milan.  I  loafed  into  the  immense  new  Hotel 
National  and  read  the  New  York  Tribune  on  a  blue  satin  divan; 
after  which  I  was  rather  surprised,  on  coming  out,  to  find  myself 


THE   OLD   SAINT-GOTHARD 

staring  at  a  green  Swiss  lake  and  not  at  the  Broadway  omnibuses. 
The  Hotel  National  is  adorned  with  a  perfectly  appointed  Broad 
way  bar  —  one  of  the  " prohibited"  ones  seeking  hospitality  in 
foreign  lands  after  the  manner  of  an  old-fashioned  French  or 
Italian  refugee. 

Milan,  October.  —  My  journey  hither  was  such  a  pleasant 
piece  of  traveller's  luck  that  I  feel  a  delicacy  for  taking  it  to  pieces 
to  see  what  it  was  made  of.  Do  what  we  will,  however,  there  re 
mains  in  all  deeply  agreeable  impressions  a  charming  something 
we  can't  analyse.  I  found  it  agreeable  even,  given  the  rest  of  my 
case,  to  turn  out  of  bed,  at  Lucerne,  by  four  o'clock,  into  the  chilly 
autumn  darkness.  The  thick-starred  sky  was  cloudless,  and  there 
was  as  yet  no  flush  of  dawn;  but  the  lake  was  wrapped  in  a 
ghostly  white  mist  which  crept  halfway  up  the  mountains  and 
made  them  look  as  if  they  too  had  been  lying  down  for  the  night 
and  were  casting  away  the  vaporous  tissues  of  their  bedclothes. 
Into  this  fantastic  fog  the  little  steamer  went  creaking  away,  and 
I  hung  about  the  deck  with  the  two  or  three  travellers  who  had 
known  better  than  to  believe  it  would  save  them  francs  or  mid 
night  sighs  —  over  those  debts  you  "pay  with  your  person" 
to  go  and  wait  for  the  diligence  at  the  Poste  at  Fliielen,  or  yet  at 
the  Guillaume  Tell.  The  dawn  came  sailing  up  over  the  moun 
tain-tops,  flushed  but  unperturbed,  and  blew  out  the  little  stars 
and  then  the  big  ones,  as  a  thrifty  matron  after  a  party  blows  out 
her  candles  and  lamps;  the  mist  went  melting  and  wandering 
away  into  the  duskier  hollows  and  recesses  of  the  mountains,  and 
the  summits  defined  their  profiles  against  the  cool  soft  light. 
'  [  Hi  ] 


ITALIAN  HOURS 

At  Fliielen,  before  the  landing,  the  big  yellow  coaches  were 
actively  making  themselves  bigger,  and  piling  up  boxes  and  bags 
on  their  roofs  in  a  way  to  turn  nervous  people's  thoughts  to 
the  sharp  corners  of  the  downward  twists  of  the  great  road.  I 
climbed  into  my  own  banquette,  and  stood  eating  peaches  — 
half-a-dozen  women  were  hawking  them  about  under  the  horses' 
legs  —  with  an  air  of  security  that  might  have  been  offensive  to 
the  people  scrambling  and  protesting  below  between  coupe  and 
interieur.  They  were  all  English  and  all  had  false  alarms  about 
the  claim  of  somebody  else  to  their  place,  the  place  for  which  they 
produced  their  ticket,  with  a  declaration  in  three  or  four  different 
tongues  of  the  inalienable  right  to  it  given  them  by  the  expendi 
ture  of  British  gold.  They  were  all  serenely  confuted  by  the  stout, 
purple-faced,  many-buttoned  conductors,  patted  on  the  backs, 
assured  that  their  bath-tubs  had  every  advantage  of  position  on 
the  top,  and  stowed  away  according  to  their  dues.  When  once 
one  has  fairly  started  on  a  journey  and  has  but  to  go  and  go  by 
the  impetus  received,  it  is  surprising  what  entertainment  one 
finds  in  very  small  things.  We  surrender  to  the  gaping  traveller's 
mood,  which  surely  is  n't  the  unwisest  the  heart  knows.  I  don't 
envy  people,  at  any  rate,  who  have  outlived  or  outworn  the  simple 
sweetness  of  feeling  settled  to  go  somewhere  with  bag  and  um 
brella.  If  we  are  settled  on  the  top  of  a  coach,  and  the  "  some 
where  "  contains  an  element  of  the  new  and  strange,  the  case  is 
at  its  best.  In  this  matter  wise  people  are  content  to  become  chil 
dren  again.  We  don't  turn  about  on  our  knees  to  look  out  of  the 
omnibus-window,  but  we  indulge  in  very  much  the  same  round- 

1 HZ] 


THE   OLD   SAINT-GOTHARD 

eyed  contemplation  of  accessible  objects.  Responsibility  is  left 
at  home  or  at  the  worst  packed  away  in  the  valise,  relegated  to 
quite  another  part  of  the  diligence  with  the  clean  shirts  and  the 
writing-case.  I  sucked  in  the  gladness  of  gaping,  for  this  occasion, 
with  the  somewhat  acrid  juice  of  my  indifferent  peaches ;  it  made 
me  think  them  very  good.  This  was  the  first  of  a  series  of  kindly 
services  it  rendered  me.  It  made  me  agree  next,  as  we  started, 
that  the  gentleman  at  the  booking-office  at  Lucerne  had  but 
played  a  harmless  joke  when  he  told  me  the  regular  seat  in 
the  banquette  was  taken.  No  one  appeared  to  claim  it;  so  the 
conductor  and  I  reversed  positions,  and  I  found  him  quite  as 
conversible  as  the  usual  Anglo-Saxon. 

He  was  trolling  snatches  of  melody  and  showing  his  great 
yellow  teeth  in  a  jovial  grin  all  the  way  to  Bellinzona  —  and  this 
in  face  of  the  sombre  fact  that  the  Saint-Gothard  tunnel  is  scrap 
ing  away  into  the  mountain,  all  the  while,  under  his  nose,  and 
numbering  the  days  of  the  many-buttoned  brotherhood.  But  he 
hopes,  for  long  service's  sake,  to  be  taken  into  the  employ  of  the 
railway ;  he  at  least  is  no  cherisher  of  quaintness  and  has  no  ro 
mantic  perversity.  I  found  the  railway  coming  on,  however,  in 
a  manner  very  shocking  to  mine.  About  an  hour  short  of  Ander- 
matt  they  have  pierced  a  huge  black  cavity  in  the  mountain, 
around  which  has  grown  up  a  swarming,  digging,  hammering, 
smoke-compelling  colony.  There  are  great  barracks,  with  tall 
chimneys,  down  in  the  gorge  that  bristled  the  other  day  but  with 
natural  graces,  and  a  wonderful  increase  of  wine-shops  in  the 
little  village  of  Goschenen  above.  Along  the  breast  of  the  moun- 

[  H3  ] 


ITALIAN  HOURS 

tain,  beside  the  road,  come  wandering  several  miles  of  very  hand 
some  iron  pipes,  of  a  stupendous  girth  —  a  conduit  for  the  water- 
power  with  which  some  of  the  machinery  is  worked.  It  lies  at 
its  mighty  length  among  the  rocks  like  an  immense  black  serpent, 
and  serves,  as  a  mere  detail,  to  give  one  the  measure  of  the  cen 
tral  enterprise.  When  at  the  end  of  our  long  day's  journey,  well 
down  in  warm  Italy,  we  came  upon  the  other  aperture  of  the  tun 
nel,  I  could  but  uncap  with  a  grim  reverence.  Truly  Nature  is 
great,  but  she  seems  to  me  to  stand  in  very  much  the  shoes  of  my 
poor  friend  the  conductor.  She  is  being  superseded  at  her  strong 
est  points,  successively,  and  nothing  remains  but  for  her  to  take 
humble  service  with  her  master.  If  she  can  hear  herself  think 
amid  that  din  of  blasting  and  hammering  she  must  be  reckoning 
up  the  years  to  elapse  before  the  cleverest  of  Ober-Ingenieurs 
decides  that  mountains  are  mere  obstructive  matter  and  has  the 
Jungfrau  melted  down  and  the  residuum  carried  away  in  bal 
loons  and  dumped  upon  another  planet. 

The  Devil's  Bridge,  with  the  same  failing  apparently  as  the 
good  Homer,  was  decidedly  nodding.  The  volume  of  water  in  the 
torrent  was  shrunken,  and  I  missed  the  thunderous  uproar  and 
far-leaping  spray  that  have  kept  up  a  miniature  tempest  in  the 
neighbourhood  on  my  other  passages.  It  suddenly  occurs  to  me 
that  the  fault  is  not  in  the  good  Homer's  inspiration,  but  simply 
in  the  big  black  pipes  above-mentioned.  They  dip  into  the  rush 
ing  stream  higher  up,  presumably,  and  pervert  its  fine  frenzy  to 
their  prosaic  uses.  There  could  hardly  be  a  more  vivid  reminder 
of  the  standing  quarrel  between  use  and  beauty,  and  of  the  hard 

[  H4  ] 


THE   OLD   SAINT-GOTHARD 

time  poor  beauty  is  having.  I  looked  wistfully,  as  we  rattled  into 
dreary  Andermatt,  at  the  great  white  zigzags  of  the  Oberalp  road, 
which  climbed  away  to  the  left.  Even  on  one's  way  to  Italy  one 
may  spare  a  throb  of  desire  for  the  beautiful  vision  of  the  castled 
Grisons.  Dear  to  me  the  memory  of  my  day's  drive  last  summer 
through  that  long  blue  avenue  of  mountains,  to  queer  little 
mouldering  Ilanz,  visited  before  supper  in  the  ghostly  dusk.  At 
Andermatt  a  sign  over  a  little  black  doorway  flanked  by  two  dung 
hills  seemed  to  me  tolerably  comical:  Mineraux,  Quadrupedes, 
Oiseaux,  CEufs,  Tableaux  Antiques.  We  bundled  in  to  dinner  and 
the  American  gentleman  in  the  banquette  made  the  acquaint 
ance  of  the  Irish  lady  in  the  coupe,  who  talked  of  the  weather  as 
foine  and  wore  a  Persian  scarf  twisted  about  her  head.  At  the 
other  end  of  the  table  sat  an  Englishman,  out  of  the  interieur, 
who  bore  an  extraordinary  resemblance  to  the  portraits  of  Ed 
ward  VI's  and  Mary's  reigns.  He  was  a  walking,  a  convincing 
Holbein.  The  impression  was  of  value  to  a  cherisher  of  quaint- 
ness,  and  he  must  have  wondered  —  not  knowing  me  for  such 
a  character  —  why  I  stared  at  him.  It  was  n't  him  I  was  staring 
at,  but  some  handsome  Seymour  or  Dudley  or  Digby  with  a  ruff 
and  a  round  cap  and  plume. 

From  Andermatt,  through  its  high,  cold,  sunny  valley,  we  passed 
into  rugged  little  Hospenthal,  and  then  up  the  last  stages  of  the 
ascent.  From  here  the  road  was  all  new  to  me.  Among  the  sum 
mits  of  the  various  Alpine  passes  there  is  little  to  choose.  You 
wind  and  double  slowly  into  keener  cold  and  deeper  stillness; 
you  put  on  your  overcoat  and  turn  up  the  collar;  you  count  the 

1 145] 


ITALIAN  HOURS 

nestling  snow-patches  and  then  you  cease  to  count  them;  you 
pause,  as  you  trudge  before  the  lumbering  coach,  and  listen  to 
the  last-heard  cow-bell  tinkling  away  below  you  in  kindlier 
herbage.  The  sky  was  tremendously  blue,  and  the  little  stunted 
bushes  on  the  snow-streaked  slopes  were  all  dyed  with  autumnal 
purples  and  crimsons.  It  was  a  great  display  of  colour.  Purple 
and  crimson  too,  though  not  so  fine,  were  the  faces  thrust  out 
at  us  from  the  greasy  little  double  casements  of  a  barrack  beside 
the  road,  where  the  horses  paused  before  the  last  pull.  There 
was  one  little  girl  in  particular,  beginning  to  lisser  her  hair,  as 
civilisation  approached,  in  a  manner  not  to  be  described,  with  her 
poor  little  blue-black  hands.  At  the  summit  are  the  two  usual 
grim  little  stone  taverns,  the  steel-blue  tarn,  the  snow-white 
peaks,  the  pause  in  the  cold  sunshine.  Then  we  begin  to  rattle 
down  with  two  horses.  In  five  minutes  we  are  swinging  along 
the  famous  zigzags.  Engineer,  driver,  horses  —  it's  very  hand 
somely  done  by  all  of  them.  The  road  curves  and  curls  and 
twists  and  plunges  like  the  tail  of  a  kite ;  sitting  perched  in  the 
banquette,  you  see  it  making  below  you  and  in  mid-air  certain 
bold  gyrations  which  bring  you  as  near  as  possible,  short  of  the 
actual  experience,  to  the  philosophy  of  that  immortal  Irishman 
who  wished  that  his  fall  from  the  house-top  would  only  last. 
But  the  zigzags  last  no  more  than  Paddy's  fall,  and  in  due  time 
we  were  all  coming  to  our  senses  over  cafe  au  lait  in  the  little 
inn  at  Faido.  After  Faido  the  valley,  plunging  deeper,  began 
to  take  thick  afternoon  shadows  from  the  hills,  and  at  Airolo  we 
were  fairly  in  the  twilight.  But  the  pink  and  yellow  houses  shim- 

[  146] 


THE   OLD   SAINT-GOTHARD 

mered  through  the  gentle  gloom,  and  Italy  began  in  broken  sylla 
bles  to  whisper  that  she  was  at  hand.  For  the  rest  of  the  way  to 
Bellinzona  her  voice  was  muffled  in  the  grey  of  evening,  and  I 
was  half  vexed  to  lose  the  charming  sight  of  the  changing  vege 
tation.  But  only  half  vexed,  for  the  moon  was  climbing  all  the 
while  nearer  the  edge  of  the  crags  that  overshadowed  us,  and  a 
thin  magical  light  came  trickling  down  into  the  winding,  murmur 
ing  gorges.  It  was  a  most  enchanting  business.  The  chestnut-trees 
loomed  up  with  double  their  daylight  stature ;  the  vines  began  to 
swing  their  low  festoons  like  nets  to  trip  up  the  fairies.  At  last 
the  ruined  towers  of  Bellinzona  stood  gleaming  in  the  moonshine, 
and  we  rattled  into  the  great  post-yard.  It  was  eleven  o'clock 
and  I  had  risen  at  four ;  moonshine  apart  I  was  n't  sorry. 

All  that  was  very  well ;  but  the  drive  next  day  from  Bellinzona 
to  Como  is  to  my  mind  what  gives  its  supreme  beauty  to  this  great 
pass.  One  can't  describe  the  beauty  of  the  Italian  lakes,  nor  would 
one  try  if  one  could ;  the  floweriest  rhetoric  can  recall  it  only  as 
a  picture  on  a  fireboard  recalls  a  Claude.  But  it  lay  spread  before 
me  for  a  whole  perfect  day:  in  the  long  gleam  of  the  Major, 
from  whose  head  the  diligence  swerves  away  and  begins  to  climb 
the  bosky  hills  that  divide  it  from  Lugano ;  in  the  shimmering, 
melting  azure  of  the  southern  slopes  and  masses;  in  the  luxu 
rious  tangle  of  nature  and  the  familiar  amenity  of  man ;  in  the 
lawn-like  inclinations,  where  the  great  grouped  chestnuts  make 
so  cool  a  shadow  in  so  warm  a  light ;  in  the  rusty  vineyards,  the 
littered  cornfields  and  the  tawdry  wayside  shrines.  But  most  of 
all  it 's  the  deep  yellow  light  that  enchants  you  and  tells  you  where 

1 147 1 


ITALIAN  HOURS 

you  are.  See  it  come  filtering  down  through  a  vine-covered  trellis 
on  the  red  handkerchief  with  which  a  ragged  contadina  has 
bound  her  hair,  and  all  the  magic  of  Italy,  to  the  eye,  makes  an 
aureole  about  the  poor  girl's  head.  Look  at  a  brown-breasted 
reaper  eating  his  chunk  of  black  bread  under  a  spreading  chest 
nut;  nowhere  is  shadow  so  charming,  nowhere  is  colour  so  charged, 
nowhere  has  accident  such  grace.  The  whole  drive  to  Lugano 
was  one  long  loveliness,  and  the  town  itself  is  admirably  Italian. 
There  was  a  great  unlading  of  the  coach,  during  which  I  wan 
dered  under  certain  brown  old  arcades  and  bought  for  six  sous, 
from  a  young  woman  in  a  gold  necklace,  a  hatful  of  peaches  and 
figs.  When  I  came  back  I  found  the  young  man  holding  open  the 
door  of  the  second  diligence,  which  had  lately  come  up,  and  beck 
oning  to  me  with  a  despairing  smile.  The  young  man,  I  must  note, 
was  the  most  amiable  of  Ticinese;  though  he  wore  no  buttons 
he  was  attached  to  the  diligence  in  some  amateurish  capacity, 
and  had  an  eye  to  the  mail-bags  and  other  valuables  in  the  boot. 
I  grumbled  at  Berne  over  the  want  of  soft  curves  in  the  Swiss 
temperament;  but  the  children  of  the  tangled  Tessin  are  cast 
in  the  Italian  mould.  My  friend  had  as  many  quips  and  cranks 
as  a  Neapolitan ;  we  walked  together  for  an  hour  under  the  chest 
nuts,  while  the  coach  was  plodding  up  from  Bellinzona,  and  he 
never  stopped  singing  till  we  reached  a  little  wine-house  where 
he  got  his  mouth  full  of  bread  and  cheese.  I  looked  into  his  open 
door,  a  la  Sterne,  and  saw  the  young  woman  sitting  rigid  and 
grim,  staring  over  his  head  and  with  a  great  pile  of  bread  and 
butter  in  her  lap.  He  had  only  informed  her  most  politely  that 

[  148  ] 


THE   OLD   SAINT-GOTHARD 

she  was  to  be  transferred  to  another  diligence  and  must  do  him 
the  favour  to  descend ;  but  she  evidently  knew  of  but  one  way  for  a 
respectable  young  insulary  of  her  sex  to  receive  the  politeness  of 
a  foreign  adventurer  guilty  of  an  eye  betraying  latent  pleasantry. 
Heaven  only  knew  what  he  was  saying!  I  told  her,  and  she 
gathered  up  her  parcels  and  emerged.  A  part  of  the  day's  great 
pleasure  perhaps  was  my  grave  sense  of  being  an  instrument 
in  the  hands  of  the  powers  toward  the  safe  consignment  of  this 
young  woman  and  her  boxes.  When  once  you  have  really  bent 
to  the  helpless  you  are  caught;  there  is  no  such  steel  trap,  and 
it  holds  you  fast.  My  rather  grim  Abigail  was  a  neophyte  in  for 
eign  travel,  though  doubtless  cunning  enough  at  her  trade,  which 
I  inferred  to  be  that  of  making  up  those  prodigious  chignons 
worn  mainly  by  English  ladies.  Her  mistress  had  gone  on  a  mule 
over  the  mountains  to  Cadenabbia,  and  she  herself  was  coming 
up  with  the  wardrobe,  two  big  boxes  and  a  bath-tub.  I  had  played 
my  part,  under  the  powers,  at  Bellinzona,  and  had  interposed 
between  the  poor  girl's  frightened  English  and  the  dreadful  Ti- 
cinese  French  of  the  functionaries  in  the  post-yard.  At  the  custom 
house  on  the  Italian  frontier  I  was  of  peculiar  service;  there 
was  a  kind  of  fateful  fascination  in  it.  The  wardrobe  was  volu 
minous;  I  exchanged  a  paternal  glance  with  my  charge  as  the 
douanier  plunged  his  brown  fists  into  it.  Who  was  the  lady  at 
Cadenabbia  ?  What  was  she  to  me  or  I  to  her  ?  She  would  n't 
know,  when  she  rustled  down  to  dinner  next  day,  that  it  was  I 
who  had  guided  the  frail  skiff  of  her  public  basis  of  vanity  to  port. 
So  unseen  but  not  unfelt  do  we  cross  each  other's  orbits.  The 

[  H9  1 


ITALIAN  HOURS 

skiff  however  may  have  foundered  that  evening  in  sight  of  land. 
I  disengaged  the  young  woman  from  among  her  fellow-travellers 
and  placed  her  boxes  on  a  hand-cart  in  the  picturesque  streets 
of  Como,  within  a  stone's  throw  of  that  lovely  striped  and  toned 
cathedral  which  has  the  facade  of  cameo  medallions.  I  could 
only  make  the  facchino  swear  to  take  her  to  the  steamboat.  He 
too  was  a  jovial  dog,  but  I  hope  he  was  polite  with  precautions. 

1873- 


ITALY  REVISITED 


ITALY  REVISITED 

I 

WAITED  in  Paris  until  after  the  elec 
tions  for  the  new  Chamber  (they  took 
place  on  the  I4th  of  October);  as  only 
after  one  had  learned  that  the  famous 
attempt  of  Marshal  MacMahon  and  his 
ministers  to  drive  the  French  nation  to 
the  polls  like  a  flock  of  huddling  sheep, 
each  with  the  white  ticket  of  an  official 
candidate  round  his  neck,  had  not  achieved  the  success  which 
the  energy  of  the  process  might  have  promised  —  only  then  it 
was  possible  to  draw  a  long  breath  and  deprive  the  republican 
party  of  such  support  as  might  have  been  conveyed  in  one's 
sympathetic  presence.  Seriously  speaking  too,  the  weather  had 
been  enchanting  —  there  were  Italian  fancies  to  be  gathered 
without  leaving  the  banks  of  the  Seine.  Day  after  day  the  air 
was  filled  with  golden  light,  and  even  those  chalkish  vistas  of  the 
Parisian  beaux  quartlers  assumed  the  iridescent  tints  of  autumn. 
Autumn  weather  in  Europe  is  often  such  a  very  sorry  affair  that 
a  fair-minded  American  will  have  it  on  his  conscience  to  call 
attention  to  a  rainless  and  radiant  October. 

'   [  153  i 


ITALIAN  HOURS 

The  echoes  of  the  electoral  strife  kept  me  company  for  a  while 
after  starting  upon  that  abbreviated  journey  to  Turin  which,  as 
you  leave  Paris  at  night,  in  a  train  unprovided  with  encourage 
ments  to  slumber,  is  a  singular  mixture  of  the  odious  and  the 
charming.  The  charming  indeed  I  think  prevails;  for  the  dark 
half  of  the  journey  is  the  least  interesting.  The  morning  light 
ushers  you  into  the  romantic  gorges  of  the  Jura,  and  after  a  big 
bowl  of  cafe  au  lait  at  Culoz  you  may  compose  yourself  comfort 
ably  for  the  climax  of  your  spectacle.  The  day  before  leaving 
Paris  I  met  a  French  friend  who  had  just  returned  from  a  visit  to 
a  Tuscan  country-seat  where  he  had  been  watching  the  vintage. 
"Italy,"  he  said,  "is  more  lovely  than  words  can  tell,  and 
France,  steeped  in  this  electoral  turmoil,  seems  no  better  than 
a  bear-garden."  The  part  of  the  bear-garden  through  which  you 
travel  as  you  approach  the  Mont  Cenis  seemed  to  me  that  day 
very  beautiful.  The  autumn  colouring,  thanks  to  the  absence 
of  rain,  had  been  vivid  and  crisp,  and  the  vines  that  swung  their 
low  garlands  between  the  mulberries  round  about  Chambery 
looked  like  long  festoons  of  coral  and  amber.  The  frontier  station 
of  Modane,  on  the  further  side  of  the  Mont  Cenis  Tunnel,  is  a 
very  ill-regulated  place ;  but  even  the  most  irritable  of  tourists, 
meeting  it  on  his  way  southward,  will  be  disposed  to  consider  it 
good-naturedly.  There  is  far  too  much  bustling  and  scrambling, 
and  the  facilities  afforded  you  for  the  obligatory  process  of  rip 
ping  open  your  luggage  before  the  officers  of  the  Italian  custom 
house  are  much  scantier  than  should  be ;  but  for  myself  there  is 
something  that  deprecates  irritation  in  the  shabby  green  and  grey 

t  w] 


ITALY  REVISITED 

uniforms  of  all  the  Italian  officials  who  stand  loafing  about  and 
watching  the  northern  invaders  scramble  back  into  marching 
order.  Wearing  an  administrative  uniform  does  n't  necessarily 
spoil  a  man's  temper,  as  in  France  one  is  sometimes  led  to  believe ; 
for  these  excellent  under-paid  Italians  carry  theirs  as  lightly  as 
possible,  and  their  answers  to  your  inquiries  don't  in  the  least 
bristle  with  rapiers,  buttons  and  cockades.  After  leaving  Mo- 
dane  you  slide  straight  downhill  into  the  Italy  of  your  desire ;  from 
which  point  the  road  edges,  after  the  grand  manner,  along  those 
great  precipices  that  stand  shoulder  to  shoulder,  in  a  prodigious 
perpendicular  file,  till  they  finally  admit  you  to  a  distant  glimpse 
of  the  ancient  capital  of  Piedmont. 

Turin  is  no  city  of  a  name  to  conjure  with,  and  I  pay  an  extrav 
agant  tribute  to  subjective  emotion  in  speaking  of  it  as  ancient. 
But  if  the  place  is  less  bravely  peninsular  than  Florence  and 
Rome,  at  least  it  is  more  in  the  scenic  tradition  than  New  York 
and  Paris;  and  while  I  paced  the  great  arcades  and  looked  at 
the  fourth-rate  shop  windows  I  did  n't  scruple  to  cultivate  a 
shameless  optimism.  Relatively  speaking,  Turin  touches  a  chord ; 
but  there  is  after  all  no  reason  in  a  large  collection  of  shabbily- 
stuccoed  houses,  disposed  in  a  rigidly  rectangular  manner,  for 
passing  a  day  of  deep,  still  gaiety.  The  only  reason,  I  am  afraid, 
is  the  old  superstition  of  Italy  —  that  property  in  the  very  look 
of  the  written  word,  the  evocation  of  a  myriad  images,  that  makes 
any  lover  of  the  arts  take  Italian  satisfactions  on  easier  terms 
than  any  others.  The  written  word  stands  for  something  that 
eternally  tricks  us;  we  juggle  to  our  credulity  even  with  such 

1 155] 


ITALIAN  HOURS 

inferior  apparatus  as  is  offered  to  our  hand  at  Turin.  I  roamed 
all  the  morning  under  the  tall  porticoes,  thinking  it  sufficient  joy 
to  take  note  of  the  soft,  warm  air,  of  that  local  colour  of  things 
that  is  at  once  so  broken  and  so  harmonious,  and  of  the  com 
ings  and  goings,  the  physiognomy  and  manners,  of  the  excellent 
Turinese.  I  had  opened  the  old  book  again ;  the  old  charm  was 
in  the  style;  I  was  in  a  more  delightful  world.  I  saw  nothing 
surpassingly  beautiful  or  curious;  but  your  true  taster  of  the 
most  seasoned  of  dishes  finds  well-nigh  the  whole  mixture  in  any 
mouthful.  Above  all  on  the  threshold  of  Italy  he  knows  again  the 
solid  and  perfectly  definable  pleasure  of  finding  himself  among 
the  traditions  of  the  grand  style  in  architecture.  It  must  be  said 
that  we  have  still  to  go  there  to  recover  the  sense  of  the  domicili 
ary  mass.  In  northern  cities  there  are  beautiful  houses,  pictur 
esque  and  curious  houses;  sculptured  gables  that  hang  over  the 
street,  charming  bay-windows,  hooded  doorways,  elegant  pro 
portions,  a  profusion  of  delicate  ornament ;  but  a  good  specimen 
of  an  old  Italian  palazzo  has  a  nobleness  that  is  all  its  own.  We 
laugh  at  Italian  "palaces/'  at  their  peeling  paint,  their  nudity, 
their  dreariness;  but  they  have  the  great  palatial  quality  — 
elevation  and  extent.  They  make  of  smaller  things  the  apparent 
abode  of  pigmies ;  they  round  their  great  arches  and  interspace 
their  huge  windows  with  a  proud  indifference  to  the  cost  of 
materials.  These  grand  proportions — the  colossal  basements, 
the  doorways  that  seem  meant  for  cathedrals,  the  far  away  cor 
nices  —  impart  by  contrast  a  humble  and  bourgeois  expression 
to  interiors  founded  on  the  sacrifice  of  the  whole  to  the  part,  and 

1 156] 


I'NOKK    TIIK    "AkCAnKS.    Tl'KIN. 


ITALY   REVISITED 

in  which  the  air  of  grandeur  depends  largely  on  the  help  of  the 
upholsterer.  At  Turin  my  first  feeling  was  really  one  of  renewed 
shame  for  our  meaner  architectural  manners.  If  the  Italians  at 
bottom  despise  the  rest  of  mankind  and  regard  them  as  barbarians, 
disinherited  of  the  tradition  of  form,  the  idea  proceeds  largely, 
no  doubt,  from  our  living  in  comparative  mole-hills.  They  alone 
were  really  to  build  their  civilisation. 

An  impression  which  on  coming  back  to  Italy  I  find  even 
stronger  than  when  it  was  first  received  is  that  of  the  contrast 
between  the  fecundity  of  the  great  artistic  period  and  the  vul 
garity  there  of  the  genius  of  to-day.  The  first  few  hours  spent 
on  Italian  soil  are  sufficient  to  renew  it,  and  the  question  I  allude 
to  is,  historically  speaking,  one  of  the  oddest.  That  the  people 
who  but  three  hundred  years  ago  had  the  best  taste  in  the  world 
should  now  have  the  worst;  that  having  produced  the  noblest, 
loveliest,  costliest  works,  they  should  now  be  given  up  to  the 
manufacture  of  objects  at  once  ugly  and  paltry;  that  the  race  of 
which  Michael  Angelo  and  Raphael,  Leonardo  and  Titian  were 
characteristic  should  have  no  other  title  to  distinction  than  third- 
rate  genre  pictures  and  catchpenny  statues  —  all  this  is  a  fre 
quent  perplexity  to  the  observer  of  actual  Italian  life.  The  flower 
of  "great"  art  in  these  latter  years  ceased  to  bloom  very  power 
fully  anywhere;  but  nowhere  does  it  seem  so  drooping  and 
withered  as  in  the  shadow  of  the  immortal  embodiments  of  the 
old  Italian  genius.  You  go  into  a  church  or  a  gallery  and  feast 
your  fancy  upon  a  splendid  picture  or  an  exquisite  piece  of  sculp 
ture,  and  on  issuing  from  the  door  that  has  admitted  you  to  the 

[  w] 


ITALIAN  HOURS 

beautiful  past  are  confronted  with  something  that  has  the  effect 
of  a  very  bad  joke.  The  aspect  of  your  lodging  —  the  carpets, 
the  curtains,  the  upholstery  in  general,  with  their  crude  and  vio 
lent  colouring  and  their  vulgar  material  —  the  trumpery  things 
in  the  shops,  the  extreme  bad  taste  of  the  dress  of  the  women, 
the  cheapness  and  baseness  of  every  attempt  at  decoration  in  the 
cafes  and  railway-stations,  the  hopeless  frivolity  of  everything 
that  pretends  to  be  a  work  of  art  —  all  this  modern  crudity  runs 
riot  over  the  relics  of  the  great  period. 

We  can  do  a  thing  for  the  first  time  but  once ;  it  is  but  once  for 
all  that  we  can  have  a  pleasure  in  its  freshness.  This  is  a  law  not 
on  the  whole,  I  think,  to  be  regretted,  for  we  sometimes  learn  to 
know  things  better  by  not  enjoying  them  too  much.  It  is  certain, 
however,  at  the  same  time,  that  a  visitor  who  has  worked  off  the 
immediate  ferment  for  this  inexhaustibly  interesting  country  has 
by  no  means  entirely  drained  the  cup.  After  thinking  of  Italy 
as  historical  and  artistic  it  will  do  him  no  great  harm  to  think 
of  her  for  a  while  as  panting  both  for  a  future  and  for  a  balance 
at  the  bank;  aspirations  supposedly  much  at  variance  with  the 
Byronic,  the  Ruskinian,  the  artistic,  poetic,  aesthetic  manner  of 
considering  our  eternally  attaching  peninsula.  He  may  grant  — 
I  don't  say  it  is  absolutely  necessary  —  that  its  actual  aspects 
and  economics  are  ugly,  prosaic,  provokingly  out  of  relation  to 
the  diary  and  the  album ;  it  is  nevertheless  true  that,  at  the  point 
things  have  come  to,  modern  Italy  in  a  manner  imposes  herself. 
I  had  n't  been  many  hours  in  the  country  before  that  truth  as 
sailed  me ;  and  I  may  add  that,  the  first  irritation  past,  I  found 

[  158  ] 


ITALY   REVISITED 

myself  able  to  accept  it.  For,  if  we  think,  nothing  is  more  easy 
to  understand  than  an  honest  ire  on  the  part  of  the  young  Italy 
of  to-day  at  being  looked  at  by  all  the  world  as  a  kind  of  solu 
ble  pigment.  Young  Italy,  preoccupied  with  its  economical  and 
political  future,  must  be  heartily  tired  of  being  admired  for  its 
eyelashes  and  its  pose.  In  one  of  Thackeray's  novels  occurs 
a  mention  of  a  young  artist  who  sent  to  the  Royal  Academy  a 
picture  representing  "A  Contadino  dancing  with  a  Trasteverina 
at  the  door  of  a  Locanda,  to  the  music  of  a  Pifferaro."  It  is  in  this 
attitude  and  with  these  conventional  accessories  that  the  world 
has  hitherto  seen  fit  to  represent  young  Italy,  and  one  does  n't 
wonder  that  if  the  youth  has  any  spirit  he  should  at  last  begin 
to  resent  our  insufferable  aesthetic  patronage.  He  has  established 
a  line  of  tram-cars  in  Rome,  from  the  Porta  del  Popolo  to  the 
Ponte  Molle,  and  it  is  on  one  of  these  democratic  vehicles  that  I 
seem  to  see  him  taking  his  triumphant  course  down  the  vista  of 
the  future.  I  won't  pretend  to  rejoice  with  him  any  more  than  I 
really  do;  I  won't  pretend,  as  the  sentimental  tourists  say  about 
it  all,  as  if  it  were  the  setting  of  an  intaglio  or  the  border  of  a 
Roman  scarf,  to  "like"  it.  Like  it  or  not,  as  we  may,  it  is  evi 
dently  destined  to  be;  I  see  a  new  Italy  in  the  future  which 
in  many  important  respects  will  equal,  if  not  surpass,  the  most 
enterprising  sections  of  our  native  land.  Perhaps  by  that  time 
Chicago  and  San  Francisco  will  have  acquired  a  pose,  and  their 
sons  and  daughters  will  dance  at  the  doors  of  locande. 

However  this  may  be,  the  accomplished  schism  between  the 
old  order  and  the  new  is  the  promptest  moral  of  a  fresh  visit  to 

[  159] 


ITALIAN   HOURS 

this  ever-suggestive  part  of  the  world.  The  old  has  become 
more  and  more  a  museum,  preserved  and  perpetuated  in  the 
midst  of  the  new,  but  without  any  further  relation  to  it  —  it 
must  be  admitted  indeed  that  such  a  relation  is  considerable  — 
than  that  of  the  stock  on  his  shelves  to  the  shopkeeper,  or  of  the 
Siren  of  the  South  to  the  showman  who  stands  before  his  booth. 
More  than  once,  as  we  move  about  nowadays  in  the  Italian  cities, 
there  seems  to  pass  before  our  eyes  a  vision  of  the  coming  years. 
It  represents  to  our  satisfaction  an  Italy  united  and  prosperous, 
but  altogether  scientific  and  commercial.  The  Italy  indeed  that 
we  sentimentalise  and  romance  about  was  an  ardently  mercan 
tile  country;  though  I  suppose  it  loved  not  its  ledgers  less,  but 
its  frescoes  and  altar-pieces  more.  Scattered  through  this  para 
dise  regained  of  trade — this  country  of  a  thousand  ports  —  we 
see  a  large  number  of  beautiful  buildings  in  which  an  endless 
series  of  dusky  pictures  are  darkening,  dampening,  fading,  fail 
ing,  through  the  years.  By  the  doors  of  the  beautiful  buildings  are 
little  turnstiles  at  which  there  sit  a  great  many  uniformed  men 
to  whom  the  visitor  pays  a  tenpenny  fee.  Inside,  in  the  vaulted 
and  frescoed  chambers,  the  art  of  Italy  lies  buried  as  in  a  thou 
sand  mausoleums.  It  is  well  taken  care  of;  it  is  constantly  copied ; 
sometimes  it  is  "  restored"  —  as  in  the  case  of  that  beautiful  boy- 
figure  of  Andrea  del  Sarto  at  Florence,  which  may  be  seen  at  the 
gallery  of  the  Uffizi  with  its  honourable  duskiness  quite  peeled 
off  and  heaven  knows  what  raw,  bleeding  cuticle  laid  bare.  One 
evening  lately,  near  the  same  Florence,  in  the  soft  twilight,  I 
took  a  stroll  among  those  encircling  hills  on  which  the  massive 

[  160  ] 


ITALY   REVISITED 

villas  are  mingled  with  the  vaporous  olives.  Presently  I  arrived 
where  three  roads  met  at  a  wayside  shrine,  in  which,  before 
some  pious  daub  of  an  old-time  Madonna,  a  little  votive  lamp 
glimmered  through  the  evening  air.  The  hour,  the  atmosphere, 
the  place,  the  twinkling  taper,  the  sentiment  of  the  observer,  the 
thought  that  some  one  had  been  rescued  here  from  an  assassin 
or  from  some  other  peril  and  had  set  up  a  little  grateful  altar 
in  consequence,  against  the  yellow-plastered  wall  of  a  tangled 
podere;  all  this  led  me  to  approach  the  shrine  with  a  reverent,  an 
emotional  step.  I  drew  near  it,  but  after  a  few  steps  I  paused. 
I  became  aware  of  an  incongruous  odour ;  it  seemed  to  me  that 
the  evening  air  was  charged  with  a  perfume  which,  although  to 
a  certain  extent  familiar,  had  not  hitherto  associated  itself  with 
rustic  frescoes  and  wayside  altars.  I  wondered,  I  gently  sniffed, 
and  the  question  so  put  left  me  no  doubt.  The  odour  was  that 
of  petroleum ;  the  votive  taper  was  nourished  with  the  essence  of 
Pennsylvania.  I  confess  that  I  burst  out  laughing,  and  a  pictur 
esque  contadino,  wending  his  homeward  way  in  the  dusk,  stared 
at  me  as  if  I  were  an  iconoclast.  He  noticed  the  petroleum  only, 
I  imagine,  to  snuff  it  fondly  up ;  but  to  me  the  thing  served  as 
a  symbol  of  the  Italy  of  the  future.  There  is  a  horse-car  from 
the  Porta  del  Popolo  to  the  Ponte  Molle,  and  the  Tuscan  shrines 
are  fed  with  kerosene. 


ITALIAN  HOURS 

II 

IF  it's  very  well  meanwhile  to  come  to  Turin  first  it's  better  still 
to  go  to  Genoa  afterwards.  Genoa  is  the  tightest  topographic 
tangle  in  the  world,  which  even  a  second  visit  helps  you  little 
to  straighten  out.  In  the  wonderful  crooked,  twisting,  climb 
ing,  soaring,  burrowing  Genoese  alleys  the  traveller  is  really  up 
to  his  neck  in  the  old  Italian  sketchability.  The  pride  of  the 
place,  I  believe,  is  a  port  of  great  capacity,  and  the  bequest  of 
the  late  Duke  of  Galliera,  who  left  four  millions  of  dollars  for 
the  purpose  of  improving  and  enlarging  it,  will  doubtless  do  much 
toward  converting  it  into  one  of  the  great  commercial  stations  of 
Europe.  But  as,  after  leaving  my  hotel  the  afternoon  I  arrived, 
I  wandered  for  a  long  time  at  hazard  through  the  tortuous  by 
ways  of  the  city,  I  said  to  myself,  not  without  an  accent  of  pri 
vate  triumph,  that  here  at  last  was  something  it  would  be  almost 
impossible  to  modernise.  I  had  found  my  hotel,  in  the  first  place, 
extremely  entertaining  —  the  Croce  di  Malta,  as  it  is  called, 
established  in  a  gigantic  palace  on  the  edge  of  the  swarming  and 
not  over-clean  harbour.  It  was  the  biggest  house  I  had  ever  en 
tered  —  the  basement  alone  would  have  contained  a  dozen  Amer 
ican  caravansaries.  I  met  an  American  gentleman  in  the  vesti 
bule  who  (as  he  had  indeed  a  perfect  right  to  be)  was  annoyed 
by  its  troublesome  dimensions  —  one  was  a  quarter  of  an  hour 
ascending  out  of  the  basement  —  and  desired  to  know  if  it  were 
a  "fair  sample"  of  the  Genoese  inns.  It  appeared  an  excellent 

[  162  ] 


ITALY   REVISITED 

specimen  of  Genoese  architecture  generally ;  so  far  as  I  observed 
there  were  few  houses  perceptibly  smaller  than  this  Titanic  tav 
ern.  I  lunched  in  a  dusky  ballroom  whose  ceiling  was  vaulted, 
frescoed  and  gilded  with  the  fatal  facility  of  a  couple  of  cen 
turies  ago,  and  which  looked  out  upon  another  ancient  house- 
front,  equally  huge  and  equally  battered,  separated  from  it  only 
by  a  little  wedge  of  dusky  space  —  one  of  the  principal  streets, 
I  believe,  of  Genoa  —  whence  out  of  dim  abysses  the  popula 
tion  sent  up  to  the  windows  (I  had  to  crane  out  very  far  to  see 
it)  a  perpetual  clattering,  shuffling,  chaffering  sound.  Issuing 
forth  presently  into  this  crevice  of  a  street  I  found  myself  up  to 
my  neck  in  that  element  of  the  rich  and  strange  —  as  to  visi 
ble  and  reproducible  "effect,"  I  mean  —  for  the  love  of  which 
one  revisits  Italy.  It  offered  itself  indeed  in  a  variety  of  col 
ours,  some  of  which  were  not  remarkable  for  their  freshness  or 
purity.  But  their  combined  charm  was  not  to  be  resisted,  and 
the  picture  glowed  with  the  rankly  human  side  of  southern  low- 
life. 

Genoa,  as  I  have  hinted,  is  the  crookedest  and  most  incoherent 
of  cities ;  tossed  about  on  the  sides  and  crests  of  a  dozen  hills, 
it  is  seamed  with  gullies  and  ravines  that  bristle  with  those  in 
numerable  palaces  for  which  we  have  heard  from  our  earliest 
years  that  the  place  is  celebrated.  These  great  structures,  with 
their  mottled  and  faded  complexions,  lift  their  big  ornamental 
cornices  to  a  tremendous  height  in  the  air,  where,  in  a  certain 
indescribably  forlorn  and  desolate  fashion,  overtopping  each 
other,  they  seem  to  reflect  the  twinkle  and  glitter  of  the  warm 

[  163] 


ITALIAN   HOURS 

Mediterranean.  Down  about  the  basements,  in  the  close  crepus 
cular  alleys,  the  people  are  for  ever  moving  to  and  fro  or  standing 
in  their  cavernous  doorways  and  their  dusky,  crowded  shops, 
calling,  chattering,  laughing,  lamenting,  living  their  lives  in  the 
conversational  Italian  fashion.  I  had  for  a  long  time  had  no 
such  vision  of  possible  social  pressure.  I  had  n't  for  a  long  time 
seen  people  elbowing  each  other  so  closely  or  swarming  so  thickly 
out  of  populous  hives.  A  traveller  is  often  moved  to  ask  himself 
whether  it  has  been  worth  while  to  leave  his  home  —  whatever 
his  home  may  have  been  —  only  to  encounter  new  forms  of 
human  suffering,  only  to  be  reminded  that  toil  and  privation, 
hunger  and  sorrow  and  sordid  effort,  are  the  portion  of  the  mass 
of  mankind.  To  travel  is,  as  it  were,  to  go  to  the  play,  to  attend 
a  spectacle ;  and  there  is  something  heartless  in  stepping  forth 
into  foreign  streets  to  feast  on  "character"  when  character  con 
sists  simply  of  the  slightly  different  costume  in  which  labour  and 
want  present  themselves.  These  reflections  were  forced  upon 
me  as  I  strolled  as  through  a  twilight  patched  with  colour  and 
charged  with  stale  smells ;  but  after  a  time  they  ceased  to  bear 
me  company.  The  reason  of  this,  I  think,  is  because  —  at  least 
to  foreign  eyes  —  the  sum  of  Italian  misery  is,  on  the  whole,  less 
than  the  sum  of  the  Italian  knowledge  of  life.  That  people  should 
thank  you,  with  a  smile  of  striking  sweetness,  for  the  gift  of  two 
pence,  is  a  proof,  certainly,  of  extreme  and  constant  destitution ; 
but  (keeping  in  mind  the  sweetness)  it  also  attests  an  enviable 
ability  not  to  be  depressed  by  circumstances.  I  know  that  this  may 
possibly  be  great  nonsense ;  that  half  the  time  we  are  acclaiming 


ITALY   REVISITED 

the  fine  quality  of  the  Italian  smile  the  creature  so  constituted 
for  physiognomic  radiance  may  be  in  a  sullen  frenzy  of  impatience 
and  pain.  Our  observation  in  any  foreign  land  is  extremely 
superficial,  and  our  remarks  are  happily  not  addressed  to  the 
inhabitants  themselves,  who  would  be  sure  to  exclaim  upon 
the  impudence  of  the  fancy-picture. 

The  other  day  I  visited  a  very  picturesque  old  city  upon  a 
mountain-top,  where,  in  the  course  of  my  wanderings,  I  arrived 
at  an  old  disused  gate  in  the  ancient  town-wall.  The  gate  had  n't 
been  absolutely  forfeited ;  but  the  recent  completion  of  a  modern 
road  down  the  mountain  led  most  vehicles  away  to  another  egress. 
The  grass-grown  pavement,  which  wound  into  the  plain  by  a 
hundred  graceful  twists  and  plunges,  was  now  given  up  to  ragged 
contadini  and  their  donkeys,  and  to  such  wayfarers  as  were  not 
alarmed  at  the  disrepair  into  which  it  had  fallen.  I  stood  in  the 
shadow  of  the  tall  old  gateway  admiring  the  scene,  looking  to 
right  and  left  at  the  wonderful  walls  of  the  little  town,  perched 
on  the  edge  of  a  shaggy  precipice ;  at  the  circling  mountains  over 
against  them;  at  the  road  dipping  downward  among  the  chest 
nuts  and  olives.  There  was  no  one  within  sight  but  a  young  man 
who  slowly  trudged  upward  with  his  coat  slung  over  his  shoulder 
and  his  hat  upon  his  ear  in  the  manner  of  a  cavalier  in  an  opera. 
Like  an  operatic  performer  too  he  sang  as  he  came ;  the  spectacle, 
generally,  was  operatic,  and  as  his  vocal  flourishes  reached  my 
ear  I  said  to  myself  that  in  Italy  accident  was  always  romantic 
and  that  such  a  figure  had  been  exactly  what  was  wanted  to  set 
off  the  landscape.  It  suggested  in  a  high  degree  that  knowledge 

[  165] 


ITALIAN  HOURS 

of  life  for  which  I  just  now  commended  the  Italians.  I  was 
turning  back  under  the  old  gateway  when  the  young  man  over 
took  me  and,  suspending  his  song,  asked  me  if  I  could  favour 
him  with  a  match  to  light  the  hoarded  remnant  of  a  cigar.  This 
request  led,  as  I  took  my  way  again  to  the  inn,  to  my  falling  into 
talk  with  him.  He  was  a  native  of  the  ancient  city,  and  answered 
freely  all  my  inquiries  as  to  its  manners  and  customs  and  its  note 
of  public  opinion.  But  the  point  of  my  anecdote  is  that  he  pre 
sently  acknowledged  himself  a  brooding  young  radical  and  com 
munist,  filled  with  hatred  of  the  present  Italian  government, 
raging  with  discontent  and  crude  political  passion,  professing  a 
ridiculous  hope  that  Italy  would  soon  have,  as  France  had  had, 
her  "'89,"  and  declaring  that  he  for  his  part  would  willingly  lend 
a  hand  to  chop  off  the  heads  of  the  king  and  the  royal  family. 
He  was  an  unhappy,  underfed,  unemployed  young  man,  who 
took  a  hard,  grim  view  of  everything  and  was  operatic  only 
quite  in  spite  of  himself.  This  made  it  very  absurd  of  me  to  have 
,  looked  at  him  simply  as  a  graceful  ornament  to  the  prospect, 
an  harmonious  little  figure  in  the  middle  distance.  "Damn  the 
prospect,  damn  the  middle  distance!"  would  have  been  all  his 
philosophy.  Yet  but  for  the  accident  of  my  having  gossipped 
with  him  I  should  have  made  him  do  service,  in  memory,  as  an 
example  of  sensuous  optimism ! 

I  am  bound  to  say  however  that  I  believe  a  great  deal  of  the 
sensuous  optimism  observable  in  the  Genoese  alleys  and  beneath 
the  low,  crowded  arcades  along  the  port  was  very  real.  Here 
every  one  was  magnificently  sunburnt,  and  there  were  plenty 

t  166] 


ITALY   REVISITED 

of  those  queer  types,  mahogany-coloured,  bare-chested  mariners 
with  earrings  and  crimson  girdles,  that  seem  to  people  a  southern 
seaport  with  the  chorus  of  "Masaniello."  But  it  is  not  fair  to 
speak  as  if  at  Genoa  there  were  nothing  but  low-life  to  be  seen, 
for  the  place  is  the  residence  of  some  of  the  grandest  people  in 
the  world.  Nor  are  all  the  palaces  ranged  upon  dusky  alleys; 
the  handsomest  and  most  impressive  form  a  splendid  series  on 
each  side  of  a  couple  of  very  proper  streets,  in  which  there  is 
plenty  of  room  for  a  coach-and-four  to  approach  the  big  door 
ways.  Many  of  these  doorways  are  open,  revealing  great  marble 
staircases  with  couchant  lions  for  balustrades  and  ceremonious 
courts  surrounded  by  walls  of  sun-softened  yellow.  One  of  the 
great  piles  in  the  array  is  coloured  a  goodly  red  and  contains 
in  particular  the  grand  people  I  just  now  spoke  of.  They  live 
indeed  on  the  third  floor ;  but  here  they  have  suites  of  wonder 
ful  painted  and  gilded  chambers,  in  which  foreshortened  fres 
coes  also  cover  the  vaulted  ceilings  and  florid  mouldings  emboss 
the  ample  walls.  These  distinguished  tenants  bear  the  name 
of  Vandyck,  though  they  are  members  of  the  noble  family  of 
Brignole-Sale,  one  of  whose  children  —  the  Duchess  of  Galliera 
—  has  lately  given  proof  of  nobleness  in  presenting  the  gallery 
of  the  red  palace  to  the  city  of  Genoa. 


ITALIAN  HOURS 

III 

ON  leaving  Genoa  I  repaired  to  Spezia,  chiefly  with  a  view  of 
accomplishing  a  sentimental  pilgrimage,  which  I  in  fact  achieved 
in  the  most  agreeable  conditions.  The  Gulf  of  Spezia  is  now  the 
headquarters  of  the  Italian  fleet,  and  there  were  several  big  iron- 
plated  frigates  riding  at  anchor  in  front  of  the  town.  The  streets 
were  filled  with  lads  in  blue  flannel,  who  were  receiving  instruc 
tion  at  a  schoolship  in  the  harbour,  and  in  the  evening  —  there 
was  a  brilliant  moon  —  the  little  breakwater  which  stretched  out 
into  the  Mediterranean  offered  a  scene  of  recreation  to  innumer 
able  such  persons.  But  this  fact  is  from  the  point  of  view  of  the 
cherisher  of  quaintness  of  little  account,  for  since  it  has  become 
prosperous  Spezia  has  grown  ugly.  The  place  is  filled  with  long, 
dull  stretches  of  dead  wall  and  great  raw  expanses  of  artificial 
land.  It  wears  that  look  of  monstrous,  of  more  than  far-west 
ern  newness  which  distinguishes  all  the  creations  of  the  young 
Italian  State.  Nor  did  I  find  any  great  compensation  in  an  im 
mense  inn  of  recent  birth,  an  establishment  seated  on  the  edge  of 
the  sea  in  anticipation  of  a  passeggiata  which  is  to  come  that  way 
some  five  years  hence,  the  region  being  in  the  meantime  of  the 
most  primitive  formation.  The  inn  was  filled  with  grave  English 
people  who  looked  respectable  and  bored,  and  there  was  of  course 
a  Church  of  England  service  in  the  gaudily-frescoed  parlour. 
Neither  was  it  the  drive  to  Porto  Venere  that  chiefly  pleased  me 
—  a  drive  among  vines  and  olives,  over  the  hills  and  beside  the 

[  168  ] 


ITALY   REVISITED 

Mediterranean,  to  a  queer  little  crumbling  village  on  a  headland, 
as  sweetly  desolate  and  superannuated  as  the  name  it  bears.  There 
is  a  ruined  church  near  the  village,  which  occupies  the  site  (ac 
cording  to  tradition)  of  an  ancient  temple  of  Venus ;  and  if  Venus 
ever  revisits  her  desecrated  shrines  she  must  sometimes  pause  a 
moment  in  that  sunny  stillness  and  listen  to  the  murmur  of  the 
tideless  sea  at  the  base  of  the  narrow  promontory.  If  Venus  some 
times  comes  there  Apollo  surely  does  as  much;  for  close  to  the 
temple  is  a  gateway  surmounted  by  an  inscription  in  Italian  and 
English,  which  admits  you  to  a  curious,  and  it  must  be  confessed 
rather  cockneyfied,  cave  among  the  rocks.  It  was  here,  says  the 
inscription,  that  the  great  Byron,  swimmer  and  poet,  "defied  the 
waves  of  the  Ligurian  sea/'  The  fact  is  interesting,  though  not 
supremely  so;  for  Byron  was  always  defying  something,  and  if 
a  slab  had  been  put  up  wherever  this  performance  came  off  these 
commemorative  tablets  would  be  in  many  parts  of  Europe  as 
thick  as  milestones. 

No;  the  great  merit  of  Spezia,  to  my  eye,  is  that  I  engaged 
a  boat  there  of  a  lovely  October  afternoon  and  had  myself  rowed 
across  the  gulf —  it  took  about  an  hour  and  a  half —  to  the  little 
bay  of  Lerici,  which  opens  out  of  it.  This  bay  of  Lerici  is  charm 
ing;  the  bosky  grey-green  hills  close  it  in,  and  on  either  side  of 
the  entrance,  perched  on  a  bold  headland,  a  wonderful  old  crum 
bling  castle  keeps  ineffectual  guard.  The  place  is  classic  to  all 
English  travellers,  for  in  the  middle  of  the  curving  shore  is  the 
now  desolate  little  villa  in  which  Shelley  spent  the  last  months  of 
his  short  life.  He  was  living  at  Lerici  when  he  started  on  that 

1 169] 


ITALIAN   HOURS 

short  southern  cruise  from  which  he  never  returned.  The  house 
he  occupied  is  strangely  shabby  and  as  sad  as  you  may  choose  to 
find  it.  It  stands  directly  upon  the  beach,  with  scarred  and  bat 
tered  walls  and  a  loggia  of  several  arches  opening  to  a  little  ter 
race  with  a  rugged  parapet,  which,  when  the  wind  blows,  must 
be  drenched  with  the  salt  spray.  The  place  is  very  lonely  —  all 
overwearied  with  sun  and  breeze  and  brine  —  very  close  to  na 
ture,  as  it  was  Shelley's  passion  to  be.  I  can  fancy  a  great  lyric 
poet  sitting  on  the  terrace  of  a  warm  evening  and  feeling  very  far 
from  England  in  the  early  years  of  the  century.  In  that  place, 
and  with  his  genius,  he  would  as  a  matter  of  course  have  heard 
in  the  voice  of  nature  a  sweetness  which  only  the  lyric  movement 
could  translate.  It  is  a  place  where  an  English-speaking  pilgrim 
himself  may  very  honestly  think  thoughts  and  feel  moved  to 
lyric  utterance.  But  I  must  content  myself  with  saying  in  halting 
prose  that  I  remember  few  episodes  of  Italian  travel  more  sym 
pathetic,  as  they  have  it  here,  than  that  perfect  autumn  after 
noon  ;  the  half-hour's  station  on  the  little  battered  terrace  of  the 
villa;  the  climb  to  the  singularly  felicitous  old  castle  that  hangs 
above  Lerici;  the  meditative  lounge,  in  the  fading  light,  on  the 
vine-decked  platform  that  looked  out  toward  the  sunset  and  the 
darkening  mountains  and,  far  below,  upon  the  quiet  sea,  beyond 
which  the  pale-faced  tragic  villa  stared  up  at  the  brightening 
moon. 


ITALY   REVISITED 

IV 

I  HAD  never  known  Florence  more  herself,  or  in  other  words 
more  attaching,  than  I  found  her  for  a  week  in  that  brilliant 
October.  She  sat  in  the  sunshine  beside  her  yellow  river  like  the 
little  treasure-city  she  has  always  seemed,  without  commerce, 
without  other  industry  than  the  manufacture  of  mosaic  paper 
weights  and  alabaster  Cupids,  without  actuality  or  energy  or 
earnestness  or  any  of  those  rugged  virtues  which  in  most  cases 
are  deemed  indispensable  for  civic  cohesion;  with  nothing  but 
the  little  unaugmented  stock  of  her  mediaeval  memories,  her 
tender-coloured  mountains,  her  churches  and  palaces,  pictures 
and  statues.  There  were  very  few  strangers;  one's  detested  fel 
low-pilgrim  was  infrequent;  the  native  population  itself  seemed 
scanty ;  the  sound  of  wheels  in  the  streets  was  but  occasional ; 
by  eight  o'clock  at  night,  apparently,  every  one  had  gone  to  bed, 
and  the  musing  wanderer,  still  wandering  and  still  musing,  had 
the  place  to  himself  —  had  the  thick  shadow-masses  of  the  great 
palaces,  and  the  shafts  of  moonlight  striking  the  polygonal  pav 
ing-stones,  and  the  empty  bridges,  and  the  silvered  yellow  of  the 
Arno,  and  the  stillness  broken  only  by  a  homeward  step,  a  step 
accompanied  by  a  snatch  of  song  from  a  warm  Italian  voice.  My 
room  at  the  inn  looked  out  on  the  river  and  was  flooded  all  day 
with  sunshine.  There  was  an  absurd  orange-coloured  paper  on 
the  walls;  the  Arno,  of  a  hue  not  altogether  different,  flowed 
beneath ;  and  on  the  other  side  of  it  rose  a  line  of  sallow  houses, 


ITALIAN  HOURS 

of  extreme  antiquity,  crumbling  and  mouldering,  bulging  and 
protruding  over  the  stream.  (I  seem  to  speak  of  their  fronts; 
but  what  I  saw  was  their  shabby  backs,  which  were  exposed  to 
the  cheerful  flicker  of  the  river,  while  the  fronts  stood  for  ever 
in  the  deep  damp  shadow  of  a  narrow  mediaeval  street.)  All  this 
brightness  and  yellowness  was  a  perpetual  delight ;  it  was  a  part 
of  that  indefinably  charming  colour  which  Florence  always  seems 
to  wear  as  you  look  up  and  down  at  it  from  the  river,  and  from 
the  bridges  and  quays.  This  is  a  kind  of  grave  radiance  —  a 
harmony  of  high  tints  —  which  I  scarce  know  how  to  describe. 
There  are  yellow  walls  and  green  blinds  and  red  roofs,  there  are 
intervals  of  brilliant  brown  and  natural-looking  blue;  but  the 
picture  is  not  spotty  nor  gaudy,  thanks  to  the  distribution  of  the 
colours  in  large  and  comfortable  masses,  and  to  the  washing- 
over  of  the  scene  by  some  happy  softness  of  sunshine.  The  river 
front  of  Florence  is  in  short  a  delightful  composition.  Part  of  its 
charm  comes  of  course  from  the  generous  aspect  of  those  high- 
based  Tuscan  palaces  which  a  renewal  of  acquaintance  with 
them  has  again  commended  to  me  as  .the  most  dignified  dwellings 
in  the  world.  Nothing  can  be  finer  than  that  look  of  giving  up  the 
whole  immense  ground-floor  to  simple  purposes  of  vestibule  and 
staircase,  of  court  and  high-arched  entrance ;  as  if  this  were  all 
but  a  massive  pedestal  for  the  real  habitation  and  people  were  n't 
properly  housed  unless,  to  begin  with,  they  should  be  lifted  fifty 
feet  above  the  pavement.  The  great  blocks  of  the  basement ;  the 
great  intervals,  horizontally  and  vertically,  from  window  to  win 
dow  (telling  of  the  height  and  breadth  of  the  rooms  within) ;  the 

[  172  ] 


ROMAN     C.VTKWAV,     KIMIM. 


ITALY   REVISITED 

armorial  shield  hung  forward  at  one  of  the  angles;  the  wide- 
brimmed  roof,  overshadowing  the  narrow  street;  the  rich  old 
browns  and  yellows  of  the  walls:  these  definite  elements  put 
themselves  together  with  admirable  art. 

Take  a  Tuscan  pile  of  this  type  out  of  its  oblique  situation 
in  the  town;  call  it  no  longer  a  palace,  but  a  villa;  set  it  down 
by  a  terrace  on  one  of  the  hills  that  encircle  Florence,  place  a 
row  of  high-waisted  cypresses  beside  it,  give  it  a  grassy  court 
yard  and  a  view  of  the  Florentine  towers  and  the  valley  of  the 
Arno,  and  you  will  think  it  perhaps  even  more  worthy  of  your 
esteem.  It  was  a  Sunday  noon,  and  brilliantly  warm,  when  I 
again  arrived ;  and  after  I  had  looked  from  my  windows  a  while 
at  that  quietly-basking  river-front  I  have  spoken  of  I  took  my 
way  across  one  of  the  bridges  and  then  out  of  one  of  the  gates 
—  that  immensely  tall  Roman  Gate  in  which  the  space  from 
the  top  of  the  arch  to  the  cornice  (except  that  there  is  scarcely 
a  cornice,  it  is  all  a  plain  massive  piece  of  wall)  is  as  great,  or 
seems  to  be,  as  that  from  the  ground  to  the  former  point.  Then 
I  climbed  a  steep  and  winding  way  —  much  of  it  a  little  dull 
if  one  likes,  being  bounded  by  mottled,  mossy  garden-walls  — 
to  a  villa  on  a  hill-top,  where  I  found  various  things  that  touched 
me  with  almost  too  fine  a  point.  Seeing  them  again,  often,  for  a 
week,  both  by  sunlight  and  moonshine,  I  never  quite  learned 
not  to  covet  them ;  not  to  feel  that  not  being  a  part  of  them  was 
somehow  to  miss  an  exquisite  chance.  What  a  tranquil,  con 
tented  life  it  seemed,  with  romantic  beauty  as  a  part  of  its  daily 
texture !  —  the  sunny  terrace,  with  its  tangled  podere  beneath  it ; 

[173] 


ITALIAN   HOURS 

the  bright  grey  olives  against  the  bright  blue  sky ;  the  long,  serene, 
horizontal  lines  of  other  villas,  flanked  by  their  upward  cypresses, 
disposed  upon  the  neighbouring  hills ;  the  richest  little  city  in  the 
world  in  a  softly-scooped  hollow  at  one's  feet,  and  beyond  it  the 
most  appealing  of  views,  the  most  majestic,  yet  the  most  familiar. 
Within  the  villa  was  a  great  love  of  art  and  a  painting-room  full 
of  felicitous  work,  so  that  if  human  life  there  confessed  to  quiet 
ness,  the  quietness  was  mostly  but  that  of  the  intent  act.  A  beau 
tiful  occupation  in  that  beautiful  position,  what  could  possibly 
be  better  ?  That  is  what  I  spoke  just  now  of  envying  —  a  way  of 
life  that  does  n't  wince  at  such  refinements  of  peace  and  ease. 
When  labour  self-charmed  presents  itself  in  a  dull  or  an  ugly 
place  we  esteem  it,  we  admire  it,  but  we  scarce  feel  it  to  be  the 
ideal  of  good  fortune.  When,  however,  its  votaries  move  as  figures 
in  an  ancient,  noble  landscape,  and  their  walks  and  contempla 
tions  are  like  a  turning  of  the  leaves  of  history,  we  seem  to  have 
before  us  an  admirable  case  of  virtue  made  easy ;  meaning  here 
by  virtue  contentment  and  concentration,  a  real  appreciation  of 
the  rare,  the  exquisite  though  composite,  medium  of  life.  You 
need  n't  want  a  rush  or  a  crush  when  the  scene  itself,  the  mere 
scene,  shares  with  you  such  a  wealth  of  consciousness. 

It  is  true  indeed  that  I  might  after  a  certain  time  grow  weary 
of  a  regular  afternoon  stroll  among  the  Florentine  lanes ;  of  sit 
ting  on  low  parapets,  in  intervals  of  flower-topped  wall,  and  look 
ing  across  at  Fiesole  or  down  the  rich-hued  valley  of  the  Arno ; 
of  pausing  at  the  open  gates  of  villas  and  wondering  at  the  height 
of  cypresses  and  the  depth  of  loggias ;  of  walking  home  in  the 

[174] 


ITALY   REVISITED 

fading  light  and  noting  on  a  dozen  westward-looking  surfaces 
the  glow  of  the  opposite  sunset.    But  for  a  week  or  so  all  this 
was  delightful.    The  villas  are  innumerable,  and  if  you're  an 
aching  alien  half  the  talk  is  about  villas.   This  one  has  a  story ; 
that  one  has  another ;  they  all  look  as  if  they  had  stories  —  none 
in  truth  predominantly  gay.    Most  of  them  are  offered  to  rent 
(many  of  them  for  sale)  at  prices  unnaturally  low ;  you  may  have 
a  tower  and  a  garden,  a  chapel  and  an  expanse  of  thirty  windows, 
for  five  hundred  dollars  a  year.    In  imagination  you  hire  three 
or  four ;  you  take  possession  and  settle  and  stay.   Your  sense  of 
the  fineness  of  the  finest  is  of  something  very  grave  and  stately; 
your  sense  of  the  bravery  of  two  or  three  of  the  best  something 
quite  tragic  and  sinister.    From  what  does  this  latter  impres 
sion  come  ?    You  gather  it  as  you  stand  there  in  the  early  dusk, 
with  your  eyes  on  the  long,  pale-brown  facade,  the  enormous 
windows,  the  iron  cages  fastened  to  the  lower  ones.   Part  of  the 
brooding  expression  of  these  great  houses  comes,  even  when  they 
have  not  fallen  into  decay,  from  their  look  of  having  outlived 
their  original  use.   Their  extraordinary  largeness  and  massive- 
ness  are  a  satire  on  their  present  fate.   They  were  n't  built  with 
such  a  thickness  of  wall  and  depth  of  embrasure,  such  a  solid 
ity  of  staircase  and  superfluity  of  stone,  simply  to  afford  an  eco 
nomical  winter  residence  to  English  and  American  families.    I 
don't  know  whether  it  was  the  appearance  of  these  stony  old 
villas,  which  seemed  so  dumbly  conscious  of  a  change  of  man 
ners,  that  threw  a  tinge  of  melancholy  over  the  general  prospect ; 
certain  it  is  that,  having  always  found  this  note  as  of  a  myriad 

'  t  175  i 


ITALIAN  HOURS 

old  sadnesses  in  solution  in  the  view  of  Florence,  it  seemed  to 
me  now  particularly  strong.  "Lovely,  lovely,  but  it  makes  me 
'blue/"  the  sensitive  stranger  couldn't  but  murmur  to  himself 
as,  in  the  late  afternoon,  he  looked  at  the  landscape  from  over 
one  of  the  low  parapets,  and  then,  with  his  hands  in  his  pockets, 
turned  away  indoors  to  candles  and  dinner. 


BELOW,  in  the  city,  through  all  frequentation  of  streets  and 
churches  and  museums,  it  was  impossible  not  to  have  a  good 
deal  of  the  same  feeling ;  but  here  the  impression  was  more  easy 
to  analyse.  It  came  from  a  sense  of  the  perfect  separateness  of 
all  the  great  productions  of  the  Renaissance  from  the  present 
and  the  future  of  the  place,  from  the  actual  life  and  manners, 
the  native  ideal.  I  have  already  spoken  of  the  way  in  which 
the  vast  aggregation  of  beautiful  works  of  art  in  the  Italian 
cities  strikes  the  visitor  nowadays  —  so  far  as  present  Italy  is  con 
cerned  —  as  the  mere  stock-in-trade  of  an  impecunious  but 
thrifty  people.  It  is  this  spiritual  solitude,  this  conscious  dis 
connection  of  the  great  works  of  architecture  and  sculpture  that 
deposits  a  certain  weight  upon  the  heart;  when  we  see  a  great 
tradition  broken  we  feel  something  of  the  pain  with  which  we 
hear  a  stifled  cry.  But  regret  is  one  thing  and  resentment  is 
another.  Seeing  one  morning,  in  a  shop-window,  the  series  of 
Mornings  in  Florence  published  a  few  years  since  by  Mr.  Ruskin, 

[  176  ] 


ITALY   REVISITED 

I  made  haste  to  enter  and  purchase  these  amusing  little  books, 
some  passages  of  which  I  remembered  formerly  to  have  read. 
I  could  n't  turn  over  many  pages  without  observing  that  the 
"separateness"  of  the  new  and  old  which  I  just  mentioned  had 
produced  in  their  author  the  liveliest  irritation.  With  the  more 
acute  phases  of  this  condition  it  was  difficult  to  sympathise,  for 
the  simple  reason,  it  seems  to  me,  that  it  savours  of  arrogance  to 
demand  of  any  people,  as  a  right  of  one's  own,  that  they  shall  be 
artistic.  "Be  artistic  yourselves!"  is  the  very  natural  reply  that 
young  Italy  has  at  hand  for  English  critics  and  censors.  When 
a  people  produces  beautiful  statues  and  pictures  it  gives  us  some 
thing  more  than  is  set  down  in  the  bond,  and  we  must  thank 
it  for  its  generosity;  and  when  it  stops  producing  them  or  car 
ing  for  them  we  may  cease  thanking,  but  we  hardly  have  a  right 
to  begin  and  rail.  The  wreck  of  Florence,  says  Mr.  Ruskin,  "is 
now  too  ghastly  and  heart-breaking  to  any  human  soul  that 
remembers  the  days  of  old  " ;  and  these  desperate  words  are  an 
allusion  to  the  fact  that  the  little  square  in  front  of  the  cathedral, 
at  the  foot  of  Giotto's  Tower,  with  the  grand  Baptistery  on  the 
other  side,  is  now  the  resort  of  a  number  of  hackney-coaches 
and  omnibuses.  This  fact  is  doubtless  lamentable,  and  it  would 
be  a  hundred  times  more  agreeable  to  see  among  people  who 
have  been  made  the  heirs  of  so  priceless  a  work  of  art  as  the 
sublime  campanile  some  such  feeling  about  it  as  would  keep  it 
free  even  from  the  danger  of  defilement.  A  cab-stand  is  a  very 
ugly  and  dirty  thing,  and  Giotto's  Tower  should  have  nothing 
in  common  with  such  conveniences.  But  there  is  more  than  one 


ITALIAN   HOURS 

way  of  taking  such  things,  and  the  sensitive  stranger  who  has 
been  walking  about  for  a  week  with  his  mind  full  of  the  sweet 
ness  and  suggestiveness  of  a  hundred  Florentine  places  may  feel 
at  last  in  looking  into  Mr.  Ruskin's  little  tracts  that,  discord  for 
discord,  there  is  n't  much  to  choose  between  the  importunity  of 
the  author's  personal  ill-humour  and  the  incongruity  of  horse- 
pails  and  bundles  of  hay.  And  one  may  say  this  without  being  at 
all  a  partisan  of  the  doctrine  of  the  inevitableness  of  new  dese 
crations.  For  my  own  part,  I  believe  there  are  few  things  in  this 
line  that  the  new  Italian  spirit  is  n't  capable  of,  and  not  many 
indeed  that  we  are  n't  destined  to  see.  Pictures  and  buildings 
won't  be  completely  destroyed,  because  in  that  case  the  forestiert, 
scatterers  of  cash,  would  cease  to  arrive  and  the  turn-stiles  at 
the  doors  of  the  old  palaces  and  convents,  with  the  little  patented 
slit  for  absorbing  your  half-franc,  would  grow  quite  rusty,  would 
stiffen  with  disuse.  But  it's  safe  to  say  that  the  new  Italy  grow 
ing  into  an  old  Italy  again  will  continue  to  take  her  elbow-room 
wherever  she  may  find  it. 

I  am  almost  ashamed  to  say  what  I  did  with  Mr.  Ruskin's 
little  books.  I  put  them  into  my  pocket  and  betook  myself  to 
Santa  Maria  Novella.  There  I  sat  down  and,  after  I  had  looked 
about  for  a  while  at  the  beautiful  church,  drew  them  forth  one 
by  one  and  read  the  greater  part  of  them.  Occupying  one's 
self  with  light  literature  in  a  great  religious  edifice  is  perhaps  as 
bad  a  piece  of  profanation  as  any  of  those  rude  dealings  which 
Mr.  Ruskin  justly  deplores;  but  a  traveller  has  to  make  the 
most  of  odd  moments,  and  I  was  waiting  for  a  friend  in  whose 

[  178] 


SANTA     MAKIA     NOVELLA.     FLORENCE. 


ITALY   REVISITED 

company  I  was  to  go  and  look  at  Giotto's  beautiful  frescoes  in 
the  cloister  of  the  church.  My  friend  was  a  long  time  coming, 
so  that  I  had  an  hour  with  Mr.  Ruskin,  whom  I  called  just  now 
a  light  litterateur  because  in  these  little  Mornings  in  Florence  he 
is  for  ever  making  his  readers  laugh.  I  remembered  of  course 
where  I  was,  and  in  spite  of  my  latent  hilarity  felt  I  had  rarely 
got  such  a  snubbing.  I  had  really  been  enjoying  the  good  old 
city  of  Florence,  but  I  now  learned  from  Mr.  Ruskin  that  this 
was  a  scandalous  waste  of  charity.  I  should  have  gone  about 
with  an  imprecation  on  my  lips,  I  should  have  worn  a  face  three 
yards  long.  I  had  taken  great  pleasure  in  certain  frescoes  by 
Ghirlandaio  in  the  choir  of  that  very  church;  but  it  appeared 
from  one  of  the  little  books  that  these  frescoes  were  as  naught. 
I  had  much  admired  Santa  Croce  and  had  thought  the  Duomo  a 
very  noble  affair;  but  I  had  now  the  most  positive  assurance  I 
knew  nothing  about  them.  After  a  while,  if  it  was  only  ill-humour 
that  was  needed  for  doing  honour  to  the  city  of  the  Medici, 
I  felt  that  I  had  risen  to  a  proper  level ;  only  now  it  was  Mr. 
Ruskin  himself  I  had  lost  patience  with,  not  the  stupid  Brunel- 
leschi,  not  the  vulgar  Ghirlandaio.  Indeed  I  lost  patience  alto 
gether,  and  asked  myself  by  what  right  this  informal  votary 
of  form  pretended  to  run  riot  through  a  poor  charmed  flaneur  s 
quiet  contemplations,  his  attachment  to  the  noblest  of  pleasures, 
his  enjoyment  of  the  loveliest  of  cities.  The  little  books  seemed 
invidious  and  insane,  and  it  was  only  when  I  remembered  that 
I  had  been  under  no  obligation  to  buy  them  that  I  checked  my 
self  in  repenting  of  having  done  so. 


ITALIAN   HOURS 

Then  at  last  my  friend  arrived  and  we  passed  together  out 
of  the  church,  and,  through  the  first  cloister  beside  it,  into  a 
smaller  enclosure  where  we  stood  a  while  to  look  at  the  tomb  of 
the  Marchesa  Strozzi-Ridolfi,  upon  which  the  great  Giotto  has 
painted  four  superb  little  pictures.  It  was  easy  to  see  the  pic 
tures  were  superb ;  but  I  drew  forth  one  of  my  little  books  again, 
for  I  had  observed  that  Mr.  Ruskin  spoke  of  them.  Hereupon 
I  recovered  my  tolerance ;  for  what  could  be  better  in  this  case, 
I  asked  myself,  than  Mr.  Ruskin 's  remarks  ?  They  are  in  fact 
excellent  and  charming  —  full  of  appreciation  of  the  deep  and 
simple  beauty  of  the  great  painter's  work.  I  read  them  aloud  to 
my  companion ;  but  my  companion  was  rather,  as  the  phrase  is, 
"put  off"  by  them.  One  of  the  frescoes  —  it  is  a  picture  of  the 
birth  of  the  Virgin  —  contains  a  figure  coming  through  a  door. 
"Of  ornament,"  I  quote,  "there  is  only  the  entirely  simple  out 
line  of  the  vase  which  the  servant  carries ;  of  colour  two  or  three 
masses  of  sober  red  and  pure  white,  with  brown  and  grey.  That 
is  all,"  Mr.  Ruskin  continues.  "And  if  you  are  pleased  with  this 
you  can  see  Florence.  But  if  not,  by  all  means  amuse  yourself 
there,  if  you  find  it  amusing,  as  long  as  you  like ;  you  can  never 
see  it."  You  can  never  see  it.  This  seemed  to  my  friend  insuf 
ferable,  and  I  had  to  shuffle  away  the  book  again,  so  that  we 
might  look  at  the  fresco  with  the  unruffled  geniality  it  deserves. 
We  agreed  afterwards,  when  in  a  more  convenient  place  I  read 
aloud  a  good  many  more  passages  from  the  precious  tracts,  that 
there  are  a  great  many  ways  of  seeing  Florence,  as  there  are  of 
seeing  most  beautiful  and  interesting  things,  and  that  it  is  very 

[  180] 


ITALY  REVISITED 

dry  and  pedantic  to  say  that  the  happy  vision  depends  upon  our 
squaring  our  toes  with  a  certain  particular  chalk-mark.  We  see 
Florence  wherever  and  whenever  we  enjoy  it,  and  for  enjoying 
it  we  find  a  great  many  more  pretexts  than  Mr.  Ruskin  seems 
inclined  to  allow.  My  friend  and  I  convinced  ourselves  also, 
however,  that  the  little  books  were  an  excellent  purchase,  on 
account  of  the  great  charm  and  felicity  of  much  of  their  inci 
dental  criticism;  to  say  nothing,  as  I  hinted  just  now,  of  their 
being  extremely  amusing.  Nothing  in  fact  is  more  comical  than 
the  familiar  asperity  of  the  author's  style  and  the  pedagogic 
fashion  in  which  he  pushes  and  pulls  his  unhappy  pupils  about, 
jerking  their  heads  toward  this,  rapping  their  knuckles  for  that, 
sending  them  to  stand  in  corners  and  giving  them  Scripture 
texts  to  copy.  But  it  is  neither  the  felicities  nor  the  aberrations 
of  detail,  in  Mr.  Ruskin's  writings,  that  are  the  main  affair  for 
most  readers;  it  is  the  general  tone  that,  as  I  have  said,  puts 
them  off  or  draws  them  on.  For  many  persons  he  will  never  bear 
the  test  of  being  read  in  this  rich  old  Italy,  where  art,  so  long 
as  it  really  lived  at  all,  was  spontaneous,  joyous,  irresponsible. 
If  the  reader  is  in  daily  contact  with  those  beautiful  Florentine 
works  which  do  still,  in  a  way,  force  themselves  into  notice  through 
the  vulgarity  and  cruelty  of  modern  profanation,  it  will  seem  to 
him  that  this  commentator's  comment  is  pitched  in  the  strangest 
falsetto  key.  "One  may  read  a  hundred  pages  of  this  sort  of 
thing,"  said  my  friend,  "without  ever  dreaming  that  he  is  talk 
ing  about  art.  You  can  say  nothing  worse  about  him  than  that." 
Which  is  perfectly  true.  Art  is  the  one  comer  of  human  life 


ITALIAN  HOURS 

in  which  we  may  take  our  ease.  To  justify  our  presence  there  the 
only  thing  demanded  of  us  is  that  we  shall  have  felt  the  repre 
sentational  impulse.  In  other  connections  our  impulses  are  condi 
tioned  and  embarrassed;  we  are  allowed  to  have  only  so  many 
as  are  consistent  with  those  of  our  neighbours ;  with  their  con 
venience  and  well-being,  with  their  convictions  and  prejudices, 
their  rules  and  regulations.  Art  means  an  escape  from  all  this. 
Wherever  her  shining  standard  floats  the  need  for  apology  and 
compromise  is  over;  there  it  is  enough  simply  that  we  please  or 
are  pleased.  There  the  tree  is  judged  only  by  its  fruits.  If  these 
are  sweet  the  tree  is  justified  —  and  not  less  so  the  consumer. 

One  may  read  a  great  many  pages  of  Mr.  Ruskin  without 
getting  a  hint  of  this  delightful  truth;  a  hint  of  the  not  unim 
portant  fact  that  art  after  all  is  made  for  us  and  not  we  for  art. 
This  idea  that  the  value  of  a  work  is  in  the  amount  of  illusion 
it  yields  is  conspicuous  by  its  absence.  And  as  for  Mr.  Ruskin's 
world's  being  a  place  —  his  world  of  art  —  where  we  may  take 
life  easily,  woe  to  the  luckless  mortal  who  enters  it  with  any 
such  disposition.  Instead  of  a  garden  of  delight,  he  finds  a  sort 
of  assize  court  in  perpetual  session.  Instead  of  a  place  in  which 
human  responsibilities  are  lightened  and  suspended,  he  finds  a 
region  governed  by  a  kind  of  Draconic  legislation.  His  respon 
sibilities  indeed  are  tenfold  increased ;  the  gulf  between  truth  and 
error  is  for  ever  yawning  at  his  feet;  the  pains  and  penalties  of 
this  same  error  are  advertised,  in  apocalyptic  terminology,  upon 
a  thousand  sign-posts ;  and  the  rash  intruder  soon  begins  to  look 
back  with  infinite  longing  to  the  lost  paradise  of  the  artless. 

[  182] 


ITALY   REVISITED 

There  can  be  no  greater  want  of  tact  in  dealing  with  those 
things  with  which  men  attempt  to  ornament  life  than  to  be  per 
petually  talking  about  "error."  A  truce  to  all  rigidities  is  the 
law  of  the  place ;  the  only  thing  absolute  there  is  that  some  force 
and  some  charm  have  worked.  The  grim  old  bearer  of  the  scales 
excuses  herself;  she  feels  this  not  to  be  her  province.  Differ 
ences  here  are  not  iniquity  and  righteousness;  they  are  simply 
variations  of  temperament,  kinds  of  curiosity.  We  are  not  under 
theological  government. 


VI 


IT  was  very  charming,  in  the  bright,  warm  days,  to  wander 
from  one  corner  of  Florence  to  another,  paying  one's  respects 
again  to  remembered  masterpieces.  It  was  pleasant  also  to  find 
that  memory  had  played  no  tricks  and  that  the  rarest  things  of 
an  earlier  year  were  as  rare  as  ever.  To  enumerate  these  feli 
cities  would  take  a  great  deal  of  space;  for  I  never  had  been 
more  struck  with  the  mere  quantity  of  brilliant  Florentine  work. 
Even  giving  up  the  Duomo  and  Santa  Croce  to  Mr.  Ruskin 
as  very  ill-arranged  edifices,  the  list  of  the  Florentine  treasures 
is  almost  inexhaustible.  Those  long  outer  galleries  of  the  Uffizi 
had  never  beguiled  me  more;  sometimes  there  were  not  more 
than  two  or  three  figures  standing  there,  Baedeker  in  hand,  to 
break  the  charming  perspective.  One  side  of  this  upstairs  por 
tico,  it  will  be  remembered,  is  entirely  composed  of  glass;  a 

[  183 1 


ITALIAN   HOURS 

continuity  of  old-fashioned  windows,  draped  with  white  curtains 
of  rather  primitive  fashion,  which  hang  there  till  they  acquire 
a  perceptible  tone.  The  light,  passing  through  them,  is  softly 
filtered  and  diffused;  it  rests  mildly  upon  the  old  marbles  — 
chiefly  antique  Roman  busts  —  which  stand  in  the  narrow  inter 
vals  of  the  casements.  It  is  projected  upon  the  numerous  pic 
tures  that  cover  the  opposite  wall  and  that  are  not  by  any  means, 
as  a  general  thing,  the  gems  of  the  great  collection;  it  imparts 
a  faded  brightness  to  the  old  ornamental  arabesques  upon  the 
painted  wooden  ceiling,  and  it  makes  a  great  soft  shining  upon 
the  marble  floor,  in  which,  as  you  look  up  and  down,  you  see 
the  strolling  tourists  and  the  motionless  copyists  almost  reflected. 
I  don't  know  why  I  should  find  all  this  very  pleasant,  but  in  fact, 
I  have  seldom  gone  into  the  Uffizi  without  walking  the  length 
of  this  third-story  cloister,  between  the  (for  the  most  part)  third- 
rate  canvases  and  panels  and  the  faded  cotton  curtains.  Why  is 
it  that  in  Italy  we  see  a  charm  in  things  in  regard  to  which  in 
other  countries  we  always  take  vulgarity  for  granted  ?  If  in  the 
city  of  New  York  a  great  museum  of  the  arts  were  to  be  pro 
vided,  by  way  of  decoration,  with  a  species  of  verandah  enclosed 
on  one  side  by  a  series  of  small-paned  windows  draped  in  dirty 
linen,  and  furnished  on  the  other  with  an  array  of  pictorial 
feebleness,  the  place  being  surmounted  by  a  thinly-painted  wooden 
roof,  strongly  suggestive  of  summer  heat,  of  winter  cold,  of  fre 
quent  leakage,  those  amateurs  who  had  had  the  advantage  of 
foreign  travel  would  be  at  small  pains  to  conceal  their  contempt. 
Contemptible  or  respectable,  to  the  judicial  mind,  this  quaint 

1 184] 


ITALY   REVISITED 

old  loggia  of  the  Uffizi  admitted  me  into  twenty  chambers  where 
I  found  as  great  a  number  of  ancient  favourites.  I  don't  know 
that  I  had  a  warmer  greeting  for  any  old  friend  than  for  Andrea 
del  Sarto,  that  most  touching  of  painters  who  is  not  one  of  the 
first.  But  it  was  on  the  other  side  of  the  Arno  that  I  found 
him  in  force,  in  those  dusky  drawing-rooms  of  the  Pitti  Palace 
to  which  you  take  your  way  along  the  tortuous  tunnel  that  wan 
ders  through  the  houses  of  Florence  and  is  supported  by  the 
little  goldsmiths'  booths  on  the  Ponte  Vecchio.  In  the  rich  insuf 
ficient  light  of  these  beautiful  rooms,  where,  to  look  at  the  pic 
tures,  you  sit  in  damask  chairs  and  rest  your  elbows  on  tables  of 
malachite,  the  elegant  Andrea  becomes  deeply  effective.  Before 
long  he  has  drawn  you  close.  But  the  great  pleasure,  after  all, 
was  to  revisit  the  earlier  masters,  in  those  specimens  of  them 
chiefly  that  bloom  so  unfadingly  on  the  big  plain  walls  of  the 
Academy.  Fra  Angelico  and  Filippo  Lippi,  Botticelli  and  Lo 
renzo  di  Credi  are  the  clearest,  the  sweetest  and  best  of  all  paint 
ers  ;  as  I  sat  for  an  hour  in  their  company,  in  the  cold  great  hall 
of  the  institution  I  have  mentioned  —  there  are  shabby  rafters 
above  and  an  immense  expanse  of  brick  tiles  below,  and  many 
bad  pictures  as  well  as  good  —  it  seemed  to  me  more  than  ever 
that  if  one  really  had  to  choose  one  could  n't  do  better  than 
choose  here.  You  may  rest  at  your  ease  at  the  Academy,  in  this 
big  first  room —  at  the  upper  end  especially,  on  the  left  —  be 
cause  more  than  many  other  places  it  savours  of  old  Florence. 
More  for  instance,  in  reality,  than  the  Bargello,  though  the  Bar- 
gello  makes  great  pretensions.  Beautiful  and  masterful  though 

[  185] 


ITALIAN   HOURS 

the  Bargello  is,  it  smells  too  strongly  of  restoration,  and,  much 
of  old  Italy  as  still  lurks  in  its  furbished  and  renovated  cham 
bers,  it  speaks  even  more  distinctly  of  the  ill-mannered  young 
kingdom  that  has  —  as  "unavoidably"  as  you  please  —  lifted 
down  a  hundred  delicate  works  of  sculpture  from  the  convent- 
walls  where  their  pious  authors  placed  them.  If  the  early  Tus 
can  painters  are  exquisite  I  can  think  of  no  praise  pure  enough 
for  the  sculptors  of  the  same  period,  Donatello  and  Luca  della 
Robbia,  Matteo  Civitale  and  Mina  da  Fiesole,  who,  as  I  re 
freshed  my  memory  of  them,  seemed  to  me  to  leave  absolutely 
nothing  to  be  desired  in  the  way  of  straightness  of  inspiration  and 
grace  of  invention.  The  Bargello  is  full  of  early  Tuscan  sculp 
ture,  most  of  the  pieces  of  which  have  come  from  suppressed  reli 
gious  houses ;  and  even  if  the  visitor  be  an  ardent  liberal  he  is 
uncomfortably  conscious  of  the  rather  brutal  process  by  which 
it  has  been  collected.  One  can  hardly  envy  young  Italy  the 
number  of  odious  things  she  has  had  to  do. 

The  railway  journey  from  Florence  to  Rome  has  been  altered 
both  for  the  better  and  for  the  worse ;  for  the  better  in  that  it  has 
been  shortened  by  a  couple  of  hours;  for  the  worse  inasmuch 
as  when  about  half  the  distance  has  been  traversed  the  train 
deflects  to  the  west  and  leaves  the  beautiful  old  cities  of  Assisi, 
Perugia,  Terni,  Narni,  unvisited.  Of  old  it  was  possible  to  call 
at  these  places,  in  a  manner,  from  the  window  of  the  train ;  even 
if  you  did  n't  stop,  as  you  probably  could  n't,  every  time  you 
passed,  the  immensely  interesting  way  in  which,  like  a  loosened 
belt  on  an  aged  and  shrunken  person,  their  ample  walls  held 

[  186  ] 


ITALY   REVISITED 

them  easily  together  was  something  well  worth  noting.  Now, 
however,  for  compensation,  the  express  train  to  Rome  stops  at 
Orvieto,  and  in  consequence  ...  In  consequence  what  ?  What 
is  the  result  of  the  stop  of  an  express  train  at  Orvieto  ?  As  I 
glibly  wrote  that  sentence  I  suddenly  paused,  aware  of  the  queer 
stuff  I  was  uttering.  That  an  express  train  would  graze  the 
base  of  the  horrid  purple  mountain  from  the  apex  of  which  this 
dark  old  Catholic  city  uplifts  the  glittering  front  of  its  cathedral 
—  that  might  have  been  foretold  by  a  keen  observer  of  con 
temporary  manners.  But  that  it  would  really  have  the  gross- 
ness  to  hang  about  is  a  fact  over  which,  as  he  records  it,  an  in 
veterate,  a  perverse  cherisher  of  the  sense  of  the  past  order,  the 
order  still  largely  prevailing  at  the  time  of  his  first  visit  to  Italy, 
may  well  make  what  is  vulgarly  called  an  ado.  The  train  does 
stop  at  Orvieto,  not  very  long,  it  is  true,  but  long  enough  to  let 
you  out.  The  same  phenomenon  takes  place  on  the  following 
day,  when,  having  visited  the  city,  you  get  in  again.  I  availed 
myself  without  scruple  of  both  of  these  occasions,  having  formerly 
neglected  to  drive  to  the  place  in  a  post-chaise.  But  frankly, 
the  railway-station  being  in  the  plain  and  the  town  on  the  sum 
mit  of  an  extraordinary  hill,  you  have  time  to  forget  the  puffing 
indiscretion  while  you  wind  upwards  to  the  city-gate.  The  posi 
tion  of  Orvieto  is  superb  — worthy  of  the  "middle  distance"  of 
an  eighteenth-century  landscape.  But,  as  every  one  knows,  the 
splendid  Cathedral  is  the  proper  attraction  of  the  spot,  which, 
indeed,  save  for  this  fine  monument  and  for  its  craggy  and  crum 
bling  ramparts,  is  a  meanly  arranged  and,  as  Italian  cities  go,  not 

[  187 1 


ITALIAN   HOURS 

particularly  impressive  little  town.  I  spent  a  beautiful  Sunday 
there  and  took  in  the  charming  church.  I  gave  it  my  best  atten 
tion,  though  on  the  whole  I  fear  I  found  it  inferior  to  its  fame. 
A  high  concert  of  colour,  however,  is  the  densely  carved  front, 
richly  covered  with  radiant  mosaics.  The  old  white  marble  of 
the  sculptured  portions  is  as  softly  yellow  as  ancient  ivory;  the 
large  exceedingly  bright  pictures  above  them  flashed  and  twinkled 
in  the  glorious  weather.  Very  striking  and  interesting  the  theo 
logical  frescoes  of  Luca  Signorelli,  though  I  have  seen  composi 
tions  of  this  general  order  that  appealed  to  me  more.  Charac 
teristically  fresh,  finally,  the  clear-faced  saints  and  seraphs,  in 
robes  of  pink  and  azure,  whom  Fra  Angelico  has  painted  upon 
the  ceiling  of  the  great  chapel,  along  with  a  noble  sitting  fig 
ure  —  more  expressive  of  movement  than  most  of  the  creations 
of  this  pictorial  peace-maker  —  of  Christ  in  judgment.  Yet  the 
interest  of  the  cathedral  of  Orvieto  is  mainly  not  the  visible  re 
sult,  but  the  historical  process  that  lies  behind  it;  those  three 
hundred  years  of  the  applied  devotion  of  a  people  of  which  an 
American  scholar  has  written  an  admirable  account.1 

1877. 

1   Charles  Eliot  Norton,  Notes  of  Travel  and  Study  in  Italy. 


A  ROMAN   HOLIDAY 


A  ROMAN  HOLIDAY 


|T  is  certainly  sweet  to  be  merry  at  the 
right  moment;  but  the  right  moment 
hardly  seems  to  me  the  ten  days  of  the 
Roman  Carnival.  It  was  my  rather  cyni 
cal  suspicion  perhaps  that  they  would  n't 
keep  to  my  imagination  the  brilliant  pro 
mise  of  legend ;  but  I  have  been  justified 
by  the  event  and  have  been  decidedly 
less  conscious  of  the  festal  influences  of  the  season  than  of  the 
inalienable  gravity  of  the  place.  There  was  a  time  when  the  Car 
nival  was  a  serious  matter  —  that  is  a  heartily  joyous  one ;  but, 
thanks  to  the  seven-league  boots  the  kingdom  of  Italy  has  lately 
donned  for  the  march  of  progress  in  quite  other  directions,  the 
fashion  of  public  revelry  has  fallen  woefully  out  of  step.  The 
state  of  mind  and  manners  under  which  the  Carnival  was  kept 
in  generous  good  faith  I  doubt  if  an  American  can  exactly  con 
ceive  :  he  can  only  say  to  himself  that  for  a  month  in  the  year 
there  must  have  been  things  —  things  considerably  of  humilia 
tion —  it  was  comfortable  to  forget.  But  now  that  Italy  is  made 
the  Carnival  is  unmade;  and  we  are  not  especially  tempted  to 
envy  the  attitude  of  a  population  who  have  lost  their  relish  for 
play  and  not  yet  acquired  to  any  striking  extent  an  enthusiasm 


ITALIAN   HOURS 

for  work.  The  spectacle  on  the  Corso  has  seemed  to  me,  on 
the  whole,  an  illustration  of  that  great  breach  with  the  past  of 
which  Catholic  Christendom  felt  the  somewhat  muffled  shock 
in  September,  1870.  A  traveller  acquainted  with  the  fully  papal 
Rome,  coming  back  any  time  during  the  past  winter,  must  have 
immediately  noticed  that  something  momentous  had  happened 
—  something  hostile  to  the  elements  of  picture  and  colour  and 
"style."  My  first  warning  was  that  ten  minutes  after  my  arrival 
I  found  myself  face  to  face  with  a  newspaper  stand.  The  im 
possibility  in  the  other  days  of  having  anything  in  the  journalistic 
line  but  the  Osservatore  Romano  and  the  Voce  della  Verita  used 
to  seem  to  me  much  connected  with  the  extraordinary  leisure  of 
thought  and  stillness  of  mind  to  which  the  place  admitted  you. 
But  now  the  slender  piping  of  the  Voice  of  Truth  is  stifled  by  the 
raucous  note  of  eventide  vendors  of  the  Capitale,  the  Liberia 
and  the  Fanfulla ;  and  Rome  reading  unexpurgated  news  is  an 
other  Rome  indeed.  For  every  subscriber  to  the  Liberia  there 
may  well  be  an  antique  masker  and  reveller  less.  As  striking  a 
sign  of  the  new  regime  is  the  extraordinary  increase  of  popula 
tion.  The  Corso  was  always  a  well-filled  street,  but  now  it 's  a 
perpetual  crush.  I  never  cease  to  wonder  where  the  new-comers 
are  lodged,  and  how  such  spotless  flowers  of  fashion  as  the  gen 
tlemen  who  stare  at  the  carriages  can  bloom  in  the  atmosphere 
of  those  camere  mobiliate  of  which  I  have  had  glimpses.  This, 
however,  is  their  own  question,  and  bravely  enough  they  meet 
it.  They  proclaimed  somehow,  to  the  first  freshness  of  my  won 
der,  as  I  say,  that  by  force  of  numbers  Rome  had  been  secu- 

[  192  ] 


A   ROMAN   HOLIDAY 

larised.  An  Italian  dandy  is  a  figure  visually  to  reckon  with,  but 
these  goodly  throngs  of  them  scarce  offered  compensation  for 
the  absent  monsignori,  treading  the  streets  in  their  purple  stock 
ings  and  followed  by  the  solemn  servants  who  returned  on  their 
behalf  the  bows  of  the  meaner  sort;  for  the  mourning  gear  of 
the  cardinals'  coaches  that  formerly  glittered  with  scarlet  and 
swung  with  the  weight  of  the  footmen  clinging  behind ;  for  the 
certainty  that  you'll  not,  by  the  best  of  traveller's  luck,  meet 
the  Pope  sitting  deep  in  the  shadow  of  his  great  chariot  with 
uplifted  fingers  like  some  inaccessible  idol  in  his  shrine.  You 
may  meet  the  King  indeed,  who  is  as  ugly,  as  imposingly  ugly,  as 
some  idols,  though  not  so  inaccessible.  The  other  day  as  I  passed 
the  Quirinal  he  drove  up  in  a  low  carriage  with  a  single  attend 
ant  ;  and  a  group  of  men  and  women  who  had  been  waiting  near 
the  gate  rushed  at  him  with  a  number  of  folded  papers.  The 
carriage  slackened  pace  and  he  pocketed  their  offerings  with  a 
business-like  air  —  that  of  a  good-natured  man  accepting  hand 
bills  at  a  street-corner.  Here  was  a  monarch  at  his  palace  gate 
receiving  petitions  from  his  subjects  —  being  adjured  to  right 
their  wrongs.  The  scene  ought  to  have  thrilled  me,  but  some 
how  it  had  no  more  intensity  than  a  woodcut  in  an  illustrated 
newspaper.  Homely  I  should  call  it  at  most;  admirably  so,  cer 
tainly,  for  there  were  lately  few  sovereigns  standing,  I  believe, 
with  whom  their  people  enjoyed  these  filial  hand-to-hand  rela 
tions.  The  King  this  year,  however,  has  had  as  little  to  do  with 
the  Carnival  as  the  Pope,  and  the  innkeepers  and  Americans 
have  marked  it  for  their  own. 

[  '93  ] 


ITALIAN  HOURS 

It  was  advertised  to  begin  at  half-past  two  o'clock  of  a  cer 
tain  Saturday,  and  punctually  at  the  stroke  of  the  hour,  from  my 
room  across  a  wide  court,  I  heard  a  sudden  multiplication  of 
sounds  and  confusion  of  tongues  in  the  Corso.  I  was  writing  to 
a  friend  for  whom  I  cared  more  than  for  any  mere  romp ;  but  as 
the  minutes  elapsed  and  the  hubbub  deepened  curiosity  got  the 
better  of  affection,  and  I  remembered  that  I  was  really  within 
eye-shot  of  an  affair  the  fame  of  which  had  ministered  to  the  day 
dreams  of  my  infancy.  I  used  to  have  a  scrap-book  with  a  coloured 
print  of  the  starting  of  the  bedizened  wild  horses,  and  the  use 
of  a  library  rich  in  keepsakes  and  annuals  with  a  frontispiece 
commonly  of  a  masked  lady  in  a  balcony,  the  heroine  of  a  delight 
ful  tale  further  on.  Agitated  by  these  tender  memories  I  de 
scended  into  the  street ;  but  I  confess  I  looked  in  vain  for  a  masked 
lady  who  might  serve  as  a  frontispiece,  in  vain  for  any  object 
whatever  that  might  adorn  a  tale.  Masked  and  muffled  ladies 
there  were  in  abundance;  but  their  masks  were  of  ugly  wire, 
perfectly  resembling  the  little  covers  placed  upon  strong  cheese 
in  German  hotels,  and  their  drapery  was  a  shabby  water-proof 
with  the  hood  pulled  over  their  chignons.  They  were  armed 
with  great  tin  scoops  or  funnels,  with  which  they  solemnly  shov 
elled  lime  and  flour  out  of  bushel-baskets  and  down  on  the 
heads  of  the  people  in  the  street.  They  were  packed  into  bal 
conies  all  the  way  along  the  straight  vista  of  the  Corso,  in  which 
their  calcareous  shower  maintained  a  dense,  gritty,  unpalatable 
fog.  The  crowd  was  compact  in  the  street,  and  the  Americans 
in  it  were  tossing  back  confetti  out  of  great  satchels  hung  round 

1 194] 


A  ROMAN   HOLIDAY 

their  necks.  It  was  quite  the  "you're  another'*  sort  of  repartee, 
and  less  seasoned  than  I  had  hoped  with  the  airy  mockery  tra 
dition  hangs  about  this  festival.  The  scene  was  striking,  in  a 
word ;  but  somehow  not  as  I  had  dreamed  of  its  being.  I  stood 
regardful,  I  suppose,  but  with  a  peculiarly  tempting  blankness 
of  visage,  for  in  a  moment  I  received  half  a  bushel  of  flour  on 
my  too-philosophic  head.  Decidedly  it  was  an  ignoble  form  of 
humour.  I  shook  my  ears  like  an  emergent  diver,  and  had  a 
sudden  vision  of  how  still  and  sunny  and  solemn,  how  peculiarly 
and  undisturbedly  themselves,  how  secure  from  any  intrusion 
less  sympathetic  than  one's  own,  certain  outlying  parts  of 
Rome  must  just  then  be.  The  Carnival  had  received  its  death 
blow  in  my  imagination;  and  it  has  been  ever  since  but  a  thin 
and  dusky  ghost  of  pleasure  that  has  flitted  at  intervals  in  and 
out  of  my  consciousness. 

I  turned  my  back  accordingly  on  the  Corso  and  wandered 
away  to  the  grass-grown  quarters  delightfully  free  even  from  the 
possibility  of  a  fellow-countryman.  And  so  having  set  myself 
an  example  I  have  been  keeping  Carnival  by  strolling  perversely 
along  the  silent  circumference  of  Rome.  I  have  doubtless  lost 
a  great  deal.  The  Princess  Margaret  has  occupied  a  balcony 
opposite  the  open  space  which  leads  into  Via  Condotti  and,  I 
believe,  like  the  discreet  princess  she  is,  has  dealt  in  no  missiles 
but  bonbons,  bouquets  and  white  doves.  I  would  have  waited 
half  an  hour  any  day  to  see  the  Princess  Margaret  hold  a  dove 
on  her  forefinger ;  but  I  never  chanced  to  notice  any  preparation 
for  that  effect.  And  yet  do  what  you  will  you  can't  really  elude 

'  t  195  ] 


ITALIAN  HOURS 

the  Carnival.  As  the  days  elapse  it  filters  down  into  the  manners 
of  the  common  people,  and  before  the  week  is  over  the  very  beg 
gars  at  the  church-doors  seem  to  have  gone  to  the  expense  of  a 
domino.  When  you  meet  these  specimens  of  dingy  drollery  caper 
ing  about  in  dusky  back-streets  at  all  hours  of  the  day  and  night, 
meet  them  flitting  out  of  black  doorways  between  the  greasy 
groups  that  cluster  about  Roman  thresholds,  you  feel  that  a  love 
of  "pranks,"  the  more  vivid  the  better,  must  from  far  back 
have  been  implanted  in  the  Roman  temperament  with  a  strong 
hand.  An  unsophisticated  American  is  wonderstruck  at  the 
number  of  persons,  of  every  age  and  various  conditions,  whom 
it  costs  nothing  in  the  nature  of  an  ingenuous  blush  to  walk  up 
and  down  the  streets  in  the  costume  of  a  theatrical  supernumer 
ary.  Fathers  of  families  do  it  at  the  head  of  an  admiring  progeni- 
ture;  aunts  and  uncles  and  grandmothers  do  it;  all  the  family 
does  it,  with  varying  splendour  but  with  the  same  good  con 
science.  "A  pack  of  babies!"  the  doubtless  too  self-conscious 
alien  pronounces  it  for  its  pains,  and  tries  to  imagine  himself 
strutting  along  Broadway  in  a  battered  tin  helmet  and  a  pair  of 
yellow  tights.  Our  vices  are  certainly  different ;  it  takes  those  of 
the  innocent  sort  to  be  so  ridiculous.  A  self-consciousness  lapsing 
so  easily,  in  fine,  strikes  me  as  so  near  a  relation  to  amenity, 
urbanity  and  general  gracefulness  that,  for  myself,  I  should  be 
sorry  to  lay  a  tax  on  it,  lest  these  other  commodities  should  also 
cease  to  come  to  market. 

I  was  rewarded,  when  I  had  turned  away  with  my  ears  full 
of  flour,  by  a  glimpse  of  an  intenser  life  than  the  dingy  foolery 

[  196] 


A  ROMAN   HOLIDAY 

of  the  Corso.  I  walked  down  by  the  back  streets  to  the  steps 
mounting  to  the  Capitol  —  that  long  inclined  plane,  rather, 
broken  at  every  two  paces,  which  is  the  unfailing  disappointment, 
I  believe,  of  tourists  primed  for  retrospective  raptures.  Certainly 
the  Capitol  seen  from  this  side  is  n't  commanding.  The  hill 
is  so  low,  the  ascent  so  narrow,  Michael  Angelo's  architecture  in 
the  quadrangle  at  the  top  so  meagre,  the  whole  place  somehow 
so  much  more  of  a  mole-hill  than  a  mountain,  that  for  the  first 
ten  minutes  of  your  standing  there  Roman  history  seems  sud 
denly  to  have  sunk  through  a  trap-door.  It  emerges  however  on 
the  other  side,  in  the  Forum;  and  here  meanwhile,  if  you  get  no 
sense  of  the  sublime,  you  get  gradually  a  sense  of  exquisite  com 
position.  Nowhere  in  Rome  is  more  colour,  more  charm,  more 
sport  for  the  eye.  The  mild  incline,  during  the  winter  months, 
is  always  covered  with  lounging  sun-seekers,  and  especially  with 
those  more  constantly  obvious  members  of  the  Roman  popula 
tion  —  beggars,  soldiers,  monks  and  tourists.  The  beggars  and 
peasants  lie  kicking  their  heels  along  that  grandest  of  loafing- 
places  the  great  steps  of  the  Ara  Coeli.  The  dwarfish  look  of  the 
Capitol  is  intensified,  I  think,  by  the  neighbourhood  of  this  huge 
blank  staircase,  mouldering  away  in  disuse,  the  weeds  thick  in  its 
crevices,  and  climbing  to  the  rudely  solemn  facade  of  the  church. 
The  sunshine  glares  on  this  great  unfinished  wall  only  to  light 
up  its  featureless  despair,  its  expression  of  conscious,  irremedi 
able  incompleteness.  Sometimes,  massing  its  rusty  screen  against 
the  deep  blue  sky,  with  the  little  cross  and  the  sculptured  porch 
casting  a  clear-cut  shadow  .on  the  bricks,  it  seems  to  have  even 

1 197] 


ITALIAN  HOURS 

more  than  a  Roman  desolation,  it  confusedly  suggests  Spain 
and  Africa  —  lands  with  no  latent  risorgimenti,  with  absolutely 
nothing  but  a  fatal  past.  The  legendary  wolf  of  Rome  has 
lately  been  accommodated  with  a  little  artificial  grotto,  among  the 
cacti  and  the  palms,  in  the  fantastic  triangular  garden  squeezed 
between  the  steps  of  the  church  and  the  ascent  to  the  Capitol, 
where  she  holds  a  perpetual  levee  and  "draws"  apparently  as 
powerfully  as  the  Pope  himself.  Above,  in  the  piazzetta  before 
the  stuccoed  palace  which  rises  so  jauntily  on  a  basement  of 
thrice  its  magnitude,  are  more  loungers  and  knitters  in  the  sun, 
seated  round  the  massively  inscribed  base  of  the  statue  of  Mar 
cus  Aurelius.  Hawthorne  has  perfectly  expressed  the  attitude 
of  this  admirable  figure  in  saying  that  it  extends  its  arm  with 
"a  command  which  is  in  itself  a  benediction."  I  doubt  if  any 
statue  of  king  or  captain  in  the  public  places  of  the  world  has 
more  to  commend  it  to  the  general  heart.  Irrecoverable  simpli 
city  —  residing  so  in  irrecoverable  Style  —  has  no  sturdier  repre 
sentative.  Here  is  an  impression  that  the  sculptors  of  the  last 
three  hundred  years  have  been  laboriously  trying  to  reproduce ; 
but  contrasted  with  this  mild  old  monarch  their  prancing  horse 
men  suggest  a  succession  of  riding-masters  taking  out  young 
ladies'  schools.  The  admirably  human  character  of  the  figure 
survives  the  rusty  decomposition  of  the  bronze  and  the  slight 
"debasement"  of  the  art;  and  one  may  call  it  singular  that  in 
the  capital  of  Christendom  the  portrait  most  suggestive  of  a 
Christian  conscience  is  that  of  a  pagan  emperor. 
You  recover  in  some  degree  your  stifled  hopes  of  sublimity  as 


A   ROMAN   HOLIDAY 

you  pass  beyond  the  palace  and  take  your  choice  of  either  curv 
ing  slope  to  descend  into  the  Forum.  Then  you  see  that  the 
little  stuccoed  edifice  is  but  a  modern  excrescence  on  the  mighty 
cliff  of  a  primitive  construction,  whose  great  squares  of  porous 
tufa,  as  they  underlie  each  other,  seem  to  resolve  themselves  back 
into  the  colossal  cohesion  of  unhewn  rock.  There  are  prodi 
gious  strangenesses  in  the  union  of  this  airy  and  comparatively 
fresh-faced  superstructure  and  these  deep-plunging,  hoary  foun 
dations;  and  few  things  in  Rome  are  more  entertaining  to  the 
eye  than  to  measure  the  long  plumb-line  which  drops  from  the 
inhabited  windows  of  the  palace,  with  their  little  over-peeping 
balconies,  their  muslin  curtains  and  their  bird-cages,  down  to 
the  rugged  constructional  work  of  the  Republic.  In  the  Forum 
proper  the  sublime  is  eclipsed  again,  though  the  late  extension 
of  the  excavations  gives  a  chance  for  it. 

Nothing  in  Rome  helps  your  fancy  to  a  more  vigorous  back 
ward  flight  than  to  lounge  on  a  sunny  day  over  the  railing  which 
guards  the  great  central  researches.  It  ''says"  more  things  to 
you  than  you  can  repeat  to  see  the  past,  the  ancient  world,  as 
you  stand  there,  bodily  turned  up  with  the  spade  and  transformed 
from  an  immaterial,  inaccessible  fact  of  time  into  a  matter  of 
soils  and  surfaces.  The  pleasure  is  the  same  —  in  kind  —  as 
what  you  enjoy  of  Pompeii,  and  the  pain  the  same.  It  was  n't 
here,  however,  that  I  found  my  compensation  for  forfeiting  the 
spectacle  on  the  Corso,  but  in  a  little  church  at  the  end  of  the 
narrow  byway  which  diverges  up  the  Palatine  from  just  beside 
the  Arch  of  Titus.  This  byway  leads  you  between  high  walls, 

[  199  1 


ITALIAN  HOURS 

then  takes  a  bend  and  introduces  you  to  a  long  row  of  rusty, 
dusty  little  pictures  of  the  stations  of  the  cross.  Beyond  these 
stands  a  small  church  with  a  front  so  modest  that  you  hardly 
recognise  it  till  you  see  the  leather  curtain.  I  never  see  a  leather 
curtain  without  lifting  it;  it  is  sure  to  cover  a  constituted  scene 
of  some  sort  —  good,  bad  or  indifferent.  The  scene  this  time 
was  meagre  —  whitewash  and  tarnished  candlesticks  and  mouldy 
muslin  flowers  being  its  principal  features.  I  should  n't  have 
remained  if  I  had  n't  been  struck  with  the  attitude  of  the  sin 
gle  worshipper  —  a  young  priest  kneeling  before  one  of  the  side- 
altars,  who,  as  I  entered,  lifted  his  head  and  gave  me  a  sidelong 
look  so  charged  with  the  languor  of  devotion  that  he  immediately 
became  an  object  of  interest.  He  was  visiting  each  of  the  altars 
in  turn  and  kissing  the  balustrade  beneath  them.  He  was  alone 
in  the  church,  and  indeed  in  the  whole  region.  There  were  no 
beggars  even  at  the  door;  they  were  plying  their  trade  on  the 
skirts  of  the  Carnival.  In  the  entirely  deserted  place  he  alone 
knelt  for  religion,  and  as  I  sat  respectfully  by  it  seemed  to  me 
I  could  hear  in  the  perfect  silence  the  far-away  uproar  of  the 
maskers.  It  was  my  late  impression  of  these  frivolous  people, 
I  suppose,  joined  with  the  extraordinary  gravity  of  the  young 
priest's  face  —  his  pious  fatigue,  his  droning  prayer  and  his  iso 
lation  —  that  gave  me  just  then  and  there  a  supreme  vision  of 
the  religious  passion,  its  privations  and  resignations  and  exhaus 
tions  and  its  terribly  small  share  of  amusement.  He  was  young 
and  strong  and  evidently  of  not  too  refined  a  fibre  to  enjoy  the 
Carnival;  but,  planted  there  with  his  face  pale  with  fasting 

[200] 


A   ROMAN   HOLIDAY 

and  his  knees  stiff  with  praying,  he  seemed  so  stern  a  satire  on  it 
and  on  the  crazy  thousands  who  were  preferring  it  to  his  way,  that 
I  half  expected  to  see  some  heavenly  portent  out  of  a  monastic 
legend  come  down  and  confirm  his  choice.  Yet  I  confess  that 
though  I  was  n't  enamoured  of  the  Carnival  myself,  his  seemed 
a  grim  preference  and  this  forswearing  of  the  world  a  terrible 
game  —  a  gaining  one  only  if  your  zeal  never  falters ;  a  hard 
fight  when  it  does.  In  such  an  hour,  to  a  stout  young  fellow  like 
the  hero  of  my  anecdote,  the  smell  of  incense  must  seem  horribly 
stale  and  the  muslin  flowers  and  gilt  candlesticks  to  figure  no  great 
bribe.  And  it  would  n't  have  helped  him  much  to  think  that 
not  so  very  far  away,  just  beyond  the  Forum,  in  the  Corso,  there 
was  sport  for  the  million,  and  for  nothing.  I  doubt  on  the  other 
hand  whether  my  young  priest  had  thought  of  this.  He  had 
made  himself  a  temple  out  of  the  very  elements  of  his  innocence, 
and  his  prayers  followed  each  other  too  fast  for  the  tempter  to 
slip  in  a  whisper.  And  so,  as  I  say,  I  found  a  solider  fact  of 
human  nature  than  the  love  of  coriandoh. 

One  of  course  never  passes  the  Colosseum  without  paying  it 
one's  respects  —  without  going  in  under  one  of  the  hundred  por 
tals  and  crossing  the  long  oval  and  sitting  down  a  while,  gener 
ally  at  the  foot  of  the  cross  in  the  centre.  I  always  feel,  as  I  do 
so,  as  if  I  were  seated  in  the  depths  of  some  Alpine  valley.  The 
upper  portions  of  the  side  toward  the  Esquiline  look  as  remote 
and  lonely  as  an  Alpine  ridge,  and  you  raise  your  eyes  to  their 
rugged  sky-line,  drinking  in  the  sun  and  silvered  by  the  blue  air, 
with  much  the  same  feeling  with  which  you  would  take  in  a  grey 

'[201   ] 


ITALIAN  HOURS 

cliff  on  which  an  eagle  might  lodge.  This  roughly  mountainous 
quality  of  the  great  ruin  is  its  chief  interest;  beauty  of  detail 
has  pretty  well  vanished,  especially  since  the  high-growing  wild- 
flowers  have  been  plucked  away  by  the  new  government,  whose 
functionaries,  surely,  at  certain  points  of  their  task,  must  have 
felt  as  if  they  shared  the  dreadful  trade  of  those  who  gather 
samphire.  Even  if  you  are  on  your  way  to  the  Lateran  you 
won't  grudge  the  twenty  minutes  it  will  take  you,  on  leaving 
the  Colosseum,  to  turn  away  under  the  Arch  of  Constantine, 
whose  noble  battered  bas-reliefs,  with  the  chain  of  tragic  statues 
—  fettered,  drooping  barbarians  —  round  its  summit,  I  assume 
you  to  have  profoundly  admired,  toward  the  piazzetta  of  the 
church  of  San  Giovanni  e  Paolo,  on  the  slope  of  Caelian.  No 
spot  in  Rome  can  show  a  cluster  of  more  charming  accidents. 
The  ancient  brick  apse  of  the  church  peeps  down  into  the  trees 
of  the  little  wooded  walk  before  the  neighbouring  church  of  San 
Gregorio,  intensely  venerable  beneath  its  excessive  modernisation ; 
and  a  series  of  heavy  brick  buttresses,  flying  across  to  an  opposite 
wall,  overarches  the  short,  steep,  paved  passage  which  leads  into 
the  small  square.  This  is  flanked  on  one  side  by  the  long  medi 
aeval  portico  of  the  church  of  the  two  saints,  sustained  by  eight 
time-blackened  columns  of  granite  and  marble.  On  another  rise 
the  great  scarce-windowed  walls  of  a  Passionist  convent,  and 
on  the  third  the  portals  of  a  grand  villa,  whose  tall  porter,  with 
his  cockade  and  silver-topped  staff,  standing  sublime  behind  his 
grating,  seems  a  kind  of  mundane  St.  Peter,  I  suppose,  to  the 
beggars  who  sit  at  the  church  door  or  lie  in  the  sun  along  the 

[202] 


A   ROMAN   HOLIDAY 

farther  slope  which  leads  to  the  gate  of  the  convent.  The  place 
always  seems  to  me  the  perfection  of  an  out-of-the-way  corner 
—  a  place  you  would  think  twice  before  telling  people  about, 
lest  you  should  find  them  there  the  next  time  you  were  to  go.  It 
is  such  a  group  of  objects,  singly  and  in  their  happy  combina 
tion,  as  one  must  come  to  Rome  to  find  at  one's  house  door;  but 
what  makes  it  peculiarly  a  picture  is  the  beautiful  dark  red  cam 
panile  of  the  church,  which  stands  embedded  in  the  mass  of 
the  convent.  It  begins,  as  so  many  things  in  Rome  begin,  with 
a  stout  foundation  of  antique  travertine,  and  rises  h:gh,  in  del 
icately  quaint  mediaeval  brickwork  —  little  tiers  and  apertures 
sustained  on  miniature  columns  and  adorned  with  small  cracked 
slabs  of  green  and  yellow  marble,  inserted  almost  at  random. 
When  there  are  three  or  four  brown-breasted  contadini  sleeping 
in  the  sun  before  the  convent  doors,  and  a  departing  monk  lead 
ing  his  shadow  down  over  them,  I  think  you  will  not  find  any 
thing  in  Rome  more  sketchable. 

If  you  stop,  however,  to  observe  everything  worthy  of  your 
water-colours  you  will  never  reach  St.  John  Lateran.  My  busi 
ness  was  much  less  with  the  interior  of  that  vast  and  empty,  that 
cold  clean  temple,  which  I  have  never  found  peculiarly  interest 
ing,  than  with  certain  charming  features  of  its  surrounding  pre 
cinct  —  the  crooked  old  court  beside  it,  which  admits  )^ou  to  the 
Baptistery  and  to  a  delightful  rear-view  of  the  queer  architectural 
odds  and  ends  that  may  in  Rome  compose  a  florid  ecclesiastical 
facade.  There  are  more  of  these,  a  stranger  jumble  of  chance 
detail,  of  lurking  recesses  and  wanton  projections  and  inexp'ic- 

[203  ] 


ITALIAN   HOURS 

able  windows,  than  I  have  memory  or  phrase  for;  but  the  gem 
of  the  collection  is  the  oddly  perched  peaked  turret,  with  its 
yellow  travertine  welded  upon  the  rusty  brickwork,  which  was 
not  meant  to  be  suspected,  and  the  brickwork  retreating  beneath 
and  leaving  it  in  the  odd  position  of  a  tower  under  which  you 
may  see  the  sky.  As  to  the  great  front  of  the  church  overlook 
ing  the  Porta  San  Giovanni,  you  are  not  admitted  behind  the 
scenes;  the  term  is  quite  in  keeping,  for  the  architecture  has  a 
vastly  theatrical  air.  It  is  extremely  imposing — that  of  St.  Peter's 
alone  is  more  so ;  and  when  from  far  off  on  the  Campagna  you  see 
the  colossal  images  of  the  mitred  saints  along  the  top  standing 
distinct  against  the  sky,  you  forget  their  coarse  construction  and 
their  inflated  draperies.  The  view  from  the  great  space  which 
stretches  from  the  church  steps  to  the  city  wall  is  the  very  prince 
of  views.  Just  beside  you,  beyond  the  great  alcove  of  mosaic,  is 
the  Scala  Santa,  the  marble  staircase  which  (says  the  legend) 
Christ  descended  under  the  weight  of  Pilate's  judgment,  and 
which  all  Christians  must  for  ever  ascend  on  their  knees ;  before 
you  is  the  city  gate  which  opens  upon  the  Via  Appia  Nuova,  the 
long  gaunt  file  of  arches  of  the  Claudian  aqueduct,  their  jagged 
ridge  stretching  away  like  the  vertebral  column  of  some  monstrous 
mouldering  skeleton,  and  upon  the  blooming  brown  and  purple 
flats  and  dells  of  the  Campagna  and  the  glowing  blue  of  the  Alban 
Mountains,  spotted  with  their  white,  high-nestling  towns;  while 
to  your  left  is  the  great  grassy  space,  lined  with  dwarfish  mulberry- 
trees,  which  stretches  across  to  the  damp  little  sister-basilica  of 
Santa  Croce  in  Gerusalemme.  During  a  former  visit  to  Rome  I 

[  204  ] 


THE     FACADK     OF     ST.     JOHN     I.ATKKAN.     KOMI-:. 


A   ROMAN   HOLIDAY 

lost  my  heart  to  this  idle  tract,1  and  wasted  much  time  in  sitting 
on  the  steps  of  the  church  and  watching  certain  white-cowled 
friars  who  were  sure  to  be  passing  there  for  the  delight  of  my  eyes. 
There  are  fewer  friars  now,  and  there  are  a  great  many  of  the 
king's  recruits,  who  inhabit  the  ex-conventual  barracks  adjoining 
Santa  Croce  and  are  led  forward  to  practise  their  goose-step  on 
the  sunny  turf.  Here  too  the  poor  old  cardinals  who  are  no  longer 
to  be  seen  on  the  Pincio  descend  from  their  mourning-coaches 
and  relax  their  venerable  knees.  These  members  alone  still  testify 
to  the  traditional  splendour  of  the  princes  of  the  Church ;  for  as 
they  advance  the  lifted  black  petticoat  reveals  a  flash  of  scarlet 
stockings  and  makes  you  groan  at  the  victory  of  civilisation  over 
colour. 

If  St.  John  Lateran  disappoints  you  internally,  you  have  an 
easy  compensation  in  pacing  the  long  lane  which  connects  it  with 
Santa  Maria  Maggiore  and  entering  the  singularly  perfect  nave 
of  that  most  delightful  of  churches.  The  first  day  of  my  stay  in 
Rome  under  the  old  dispensation  I  spent  in  wandering  at  random 
through  the  city,  with  accident  for  my  valet-de-place.  It  served  me 
to  perfection  and  introduced  me  to  the  best  things;  among  others 
to  an  immediate  happy  relation  with  Santa  Maria  Maggiore. 
First  impressions,  memorable  impressions,  are  generally  irre 
coverable  ;  they  often  leave  one  the  wiser,  but  they  rarely  return 
in  the  same  form.  I  remember,  of  my  coming  uninformed  and 
unprepared  into  the  place  of  worship  and  of  curiosity  that  I  have 
named,  only  that  I  sat  for  half  an  hour  on  the  edge  of  the  base  of 
1  Utterly  overbuilt  and  gone —  1909. 

[205] 


ITALIAN  HOURS 

one  of  the  marble  columns  of  the  beautiful  nave  and  enjoyed  a 
perfect  revel  of —  what  shall  I  call  it  ?  —  taste,  intelligence,  fancy, 
perceptive  emotion  ?  The  place  proved  so  endlessly  suggestive 
that  perception  became  a  throbbing  confusion  of  images,  and  I 
departed  with  a  sense  of  knowing  a  good  deal  that  is  not  set  down 
in  Murray.  I  have  seated  myself  more  than  once  again  at  the 
base  of  the  same  column ;  but  you  live  your  life  only  once,  the  parts 
as  well  as  the  whole.  The  obvious  charm  of  the  church  is  the  ele 
gant  grandeur  of  the  nave  —  its  perfect  shapeliness  and  its  rich 
simplicity,  its  long  double  row  of  white  marble  columns  and  its 
high  flat  roof,  embossed  with  intricate  gildings  and  mouldings.  It 
opens  into  a  choir  of  an  extraordinary  splendour  of  effect,  which 
I  recommend  you  to  look  out  for  of  a  fine  afternoon.  At  such  a 
time  the  glowing  western  light,  entering  the  high  windows  of  the 
tribune,  kindles  the  scattered  masses  of  colour  into  sombre  bright 
ness,  scintillates  on  the  great  solemn  mosaic  of  the  vault,  touches 
the  porphyry  columns  of  the  superb  baldachino  with  ruby  lights, 
and  buries  its  shining  shafts  in  the  deep-toned  shadows  that  hang 
about  frescoes  and  sculptures  and  mouldings.  The  deeper  charm 
even  than  in  such  things,  however,  is  the  social  or  historic  note  or 
tone  or  atmosphere  of  the  church  —  I  fumble,  you  see,  for  my  right 
expression ;  the  sense  it  gives  you,  in  common  with  most  of  the  Ro 
man  churches,  and  more  than  any  of  them,  of  having  been  prayed 
in  for  several  centuries  by  an  endlessly  curious  and  complex  society. 
It  takes  no  great  attention  to  let  it  come  to  you  that  the  authority 
of  Italian  Ca  holicism  has  lapsed  not  a  little  in  these  days ;  not  less 
also  perhaps  than  to  feel  that,  as  they  stand,  these  deserted  temples 

1 206 '] 


A   ROMAN   HOLIDAY 

were  the  fruit  of  a  society  leavened  through  and  through  by  ec 
clesiastical  manners,  and  that  they  formed  for  ages  the  constant 
background  of  the  human  drama.  They  are,  as  one  may  say,  the 
churchiest  churches  in  Europe  —  the  fullest  of  gathered  mem 
ories,  of  the  experience  of  their  office.  There's  not  a  figure  one 
has  read  of  in  old-world  annals  that  is  n't  to  be  imagined  on  proper 
occasion  kneeling  before  the  lamp-decked  Confession  beneath 
the  altar  of  Santa  Maria  Maggiore.  One  sees  after  all,  however, 
even  among  the  most  palpable  realities,  very  much  what  the  play 
of  one's  imagination  projects  there ;  and  I  present  my  remarks 
simply  as  a  reminder  that  one's  constant  excursions  into  these 
places  are  not  the  least  interesting  episodes  of  one's  walks  in 
Rome. 

I  had  meant  to  give  a  simple  illustration  of  the  church-habit, 
so  to  speak,  but  I  have  given  it  at  such  a  length  as  leaves  scant 
space  to  touch  on  the  innumerable  topics  brushed  by  the  pen  that 
begins  to  take  Roman  notes.  It  is  by  the  aimless  flanerie  which 
leaves  you  free  to  follow  capriciously  every  hint  of  entertainment 
that  you  get  to  know  Rome.  The  greater  part  of  the  life  about  you 
goes  on  in  the  streets;  and  for  an  observer  fresh  from  a  country 
in  which  town  scenery  is  at  the  least  monotonous  incident  and 
character  and  picture  seem  to  abound.  I  become  conscious  with 
compunction,  let  me  hasten  to  add,  that  I  have  launched  myself 
thus  on  the  subject  of  Roman  churches  and  Roman  walks  with 
out  so  much  as  a  preliminary  allusion  to  St.  Peter's.  One  is  apt 
to  proceed  thither  on  rainy  days  with  intentions  of  exercise  — 
to  put  the  case  only  at  that  —  and  to  carry  these  out  body  and 

[207  ] 


ITALIAN  HOURS 

mind.  Taken  as  a  walk  not  less  than  as  a  church,  St.  Peter's 
of  course  reigns  alone.  Even  for  the  profane  "constitutional"  it 
serves  where  the  Boulevards,  where  Piccadilly  and  Broadway, 
fall  short,  and  if  it  did  n't  offer  to  our  use  the  grandest  area  in 
the  world  it  would  still  offer  the  most  diverting.  Few  great  works 
of  art  last  longer  to  the  curiosity,  to  the  perpetually  transcended 
attention.  You  think  you  have  taken  the  whole  thing  in,  but  it 
expands,  it  rises  sublime  again,  and  leaves  your  measure  itself 
poor.  You  never  let  the  ponderous  leather  curtain  bang  down 
behind  you  —  your  weak  lift  of  a  scant  edge  of  whose  padded 
vastness  resembles  the  liberty  taken  in  folding  back  the  parch 
ment  corner  of  some  mighty  folio  page  —  without  feeling  all 
former  visits  to  have  been  but  missed  attempts  at  apprehension 
and  the  actual  to  achieve  your  first  real  possession.  The  conven 
tional  question  is  ever  as  to  whether  one  has  n't  been  "disap 
pointed  in  the  size,"  but  a  few  honest  folk  here  and  there,  I 
hope,  will  never  cease  to  say  no.  The  place  struck  me  from  the 
first  as  the  hugest  thing  conceivable  —  a  real  exaltation  of  one's 
idea  of  space ;  so  that  one's  entrance,  even  from  the  great  empty 
square  which  either  glares  beneath  the  deep  blue  sky  or  makes 
of  the  cool  far-cast  shadow  of  the  immense  front  something  that 
resembles  a  big  slate-coloured  country  on  a  map,  seems  not  so 
much  a  going  in  somewhere  as  a  going  out.  The  mere  man  of 
pleasure  in  quest  of  new  sensations  might  well  not  know  where 
to  better  his  encounter  there  of  the  sublime  shock  that  brings 
him,  within  the  threshold,  to  an  immediate  gasping  pause.  There 
are  days  when  the  vast  nave  looks  mysteriously  vaster  than  on 

[208  ] 


A  ROMAN   HOLIDAY 

others  and  the  gorgeous  baldachino  a  longer  journey  beyond  the 
far-spreading  tessellated  plain  of  the  pavement,  and  when  the 
light  has  yet  a  quality  which  lets  things  loom  their  largest,  while 
the  scattered  figures  —  I  mean  the  human,  for  there  are  plenty 
of  others  —  mark  happily  the  scale  of  items  and  parts.  Then 
you  have  only  to  stroll  and  stroll  and  gaze  and  gaze ;  to  watch 
the  glorious  altar-canopy  lift  its  bronze  architecture,  its  colossal 
embroidered  contortions,  like  a  temple  within  a  temple,  and  feel 
yourself,  at  the  bottom  of  the  abysmal  shaft  of  the  dome,  dwindle 
to  a  crawling  dot. 

Much  of  the  constituted  beauty  resides  in  the  fact  that  it  is 
all  general  beauty,  that  you  are  appealed  to  by  no  specific  de 
tails,  or  that  these  at  least,  practically  never  importunate,  are  as 
taken  for  granted  as  the  lieutenants  and  captains  are  taken  for 
granted  in  a  great  standing  army  —  among  whom  indeed  indi 
vidual  aspects  may  figure  here  the  rather  shifting  range  of  deco 
rative  dignity  in  which  details,  when  observed,  often  prove  poor 
(though  never  not  massive  and  substantially  precious)  and  some 
times  prove  ridiculous.  The  sculptures,  with  the  sole  exception 
of  Michael  Angelo's  ineffable  "Pieta,"  which  lurks  obscurely  in 
a  side-chapel  —  this  indeed  to  my  sense  the  rarest  artistic  com 
bination  of  the  greatest  things  the  hand  of  man  has  produced 
—  are  either  bad  or  indifferent;  and  the  universal  incrustation 
of  marble,  though  sumptuous  enough,  has  a  less  brilliant  effect 
than  much  later  work  of  the  same  sort,  that  for  instance  of  St. 
Paul's  without  the  Walls.  The  supreme  beauty  is  the  splen 
didly  sustained  simplicity,  of  the  whole.  The  thing  represents 

[  209  ] 


ITALIAN  HOURS 

a  prodigious  imagination  extraordinarily  strained,  yet  strained, 
at  its  happiest  pitch,  without  breaking.  Its  happiest  pitch  I 
say,  because  this  is  the  only  creation  of  its  strenuous  author  in 
presence  of  which  you  are  in  presence  of  serenity.  You  may 
invoke  the  idea  of  ease  at  St.  Peter's  without  a  sense  of  sacrilege 
—  which  you  can  hardly  do,  if  you  are  at  all  spiritually  nervous, 
in  Westminster  Abbey  or  Notre  Dame.  The  vast  enclosed  clear 
ness  has  much  to  do  with  the  idea.  There  are  no  shadows  to 
speak  of,  no  marked  effects  of  shade ;  only  effects  of  light  innum 
erable —  points  at  which  this  element  seems  to  mass  itself  in  airy 
density  and  scatter  itself  in  enchanting  gradations  and  cadences. 
It  performs  the  office  of  gloom  or  of  mystery  in  Gothic  churches ; 
hangs  like  a  rolling  mist  along  the  gilded  vault  of  the  nave,  melts 
into  bright  interfusion  the  mosaic  scintillations  of  the  dome,  clings 
and  clusters  and  lingers,  animates  the  whole  huge  and  otherwise 
empty  shell.  A  good  Catholic,  I  suppose,  is  the  same  Catholic  any 
where,  before  the  grandest  as  well  as  the  humblest  altars ;  but  to 
a  visitor  not  formally  enrolled  St.  Peter's  speaks  less  of  aspiration 
than  of  full  and  convenient  assurance.  The  soul  infinitely  ex 
pands  there,  if  one  will,  but  all  on  its  quite  human  level.  It  mar 
vels  at  the  reach  of  our  dream  and  the  immensity  of  our  resources. 
To  be  so  impressed  and  put  in  our  place,  we  say,  is  to  be  suffi 
ciently  "saved" ;  we  can't  be  more  than  that  in  heaven  itself;  and 
what  specifically  celestial  beauty  such  a  show  or  such  a  substitute 
may  lack  it  makes  up  for  in  certainty  and  tangibility.  And  yet  if 
one's  hours  on  the  scene  are  not  actually  spent  in  praying,  the 
spirit  seeks  it  again  as  for  the  finer  comfort,  for  the  blessing, 

[210] 


A   ROMAN   HOLIDAY 

exactly,  of  its  example,  its  protection  and  its  exclusion.  When 
you  are  weary  of  the  swarming  democracy  of  your  fellow-tourists, 
of  the  unremunerative  aspects  of  human  nature  on  Corso  and 
Pincio,  of  the  oppressively  frequent  combination  of  coronets  on 
carriage  panels  and  stupid  faces  in  carriages,  of  addled  brains 
and  lacquered  boots,  of  ruin  and  dirt  and  decay,  of  priests  and 
beggars  and  takers  of  advantage,  of  the  myriad  tokens  of  a  halting 
civilisation,  the  image  of  the  great  temple  depresses  the  balance  of 
your  doubts,  seems  to  rise  above  even  the  highest  tide  of  vulgarity 
and  make  you  still  believe  in  the  heroic  will  and  the  heroic  act. 
It 's  a  relief,  in  other  words,  to  feel  that  there  's  nothing  but  a  cab- 
fare  between  your  pessimism  and  one  of  the  greatest  of  human 
achievements. 

This  might  serve  as  a  Lenten  peroration  to  these  remarks  of 
mine  which  have  strayed  so  woefully  from  their  jovial  text,  save 
that  I  ought  fairly  to  confess  that  my  last  impression  of  the  Carni 
val  was  altogether  Carnivalesque.  The  merry-making  of  Shrove 
Tuesday  had  life  and  felicity;  the  dead  letter  of  tradition  broke 
out  into  nature  and  grace.  I  pocketed  my  scepticism  and  spent  a 
long  afternoon  on  the  Corso.  Almost  every  one  was  a  masker,  but 
you  had  no  need  to  conform;  the  pelting  rain  of  confetti  effect 
ually  disguised  you.  I  can't  say  I  found  it  all  very  exhilarating; 
but  here  and  there  I  noticed  a  brighter  episode  —  a  capering  clown 
inflamed  with  contagious  jollity,  some  finer  humourist  forming  a 
circle  every  thirty  yards  to  crow  at  his  indefatigable  sallies.  One 
clever  performer  so  especially  pleased  me  that  I  should  have  been 
glad  to  catch  a  glimpse  of  ^the  natural  man.  You  imagined  for 

' 


ITALIAN  HOURS 

him  that  he  was  taking  a  prodigious  intellectual  holiday  and  that 
his  gaiety  was  in  inverse  ratio  to  his  daily  mood.  Dressed  as  a 
needy  scholar,  in  an  ancient  evening-coat  and  with  a  rusty  black 
hat  and  gloves  fantastically  patched,  he  carried  a  little  volume 
carefully  under  his  arm.  His  humours  were  in  excellent  taste, 
his  whole  manner  the  perfection  of  genteel  comedy.  The  crowd 
seemed  to  relish  him  vastly,  and  he  at  once  commanded  a  glee 
fully  attentive  audience.  Many  of  his  sallies  I  lost ;  those  I  caught 
were  excellent.  His  trick  was  often  to  begin  by  taking  some  one 
urbanely  and  caressingly  by  the  chin  and  complimenting  him  on 
the  intelligenza  della  sua  fisionomia.  I  kept  near  him  as  long  as 
I  could;  for  he  struck  me  as  a  real  ironic  artist,  cherishing  a  dis 
interested,  and  yet  at  the  same  time  a  motived  and  a  moral,  pas 
sion  for  the  grotesque.  I  should  have  liked,  however  —  if  indeed 
I  should  n't  have  feared  —  to  see  him  the  next  morning,  or  when 
he  unmasked  that  night  over  his  hard-earned  supper  in  a  smoky 
trattoria.  As  the  evening  went  on  the  crowd  thickened  and  became 
a  motley  press  of  shouting,  pushing,  scrambling,  everything  but 
squabbling,  revellers.  The  rain  of  missiles  ceased  at  dusk,  but 
the  universal  deposit  of  chalk  and  flour  was  trampled  into  a  cloud 
made  lurid  by  flaring  pyramids  of  the  gas-lamps  that  replaced  for 
the  occasion  the  stingy  Roman  luminaries.  Early  in  the  evening 
came  off  the  classic  exhibition  of  the  moccoletti,  which  I  but  half 
saw,  like  a  languid  reporter  resigned  beforehand  to  be  cashiered 
for  want  of  enterprise.  From  the  mouth  of  a  side-street,  over  a 
thousand  heads,  I  caught  a  huge  slow-moving  illuminated  car, 
from  which  blue-lights  and  rockets  and  Roman  candles  were  in 

[212   ] 


A   ROMAN   HOLIDAY 

course  of  discharge,  meeting  all  in  a  dim  fuliginous  glare  far 
above  the  house-tops.  It  was  like  a  glimpse  of  some  public  orgy 
in  ancient  Babylon.  In  the  small  hours  of  the  morning,  walking 
homeward  from  a  private  entertainment,  I  found  Ash  Wednesday 
still  kept  at  bay.  The  Corso,  flaring  with  light,  smelt  like  a  circus. 
Every  one  was  taking  friendly  liberties  with  every  one  else  and 
using  up  the  dregs  of  his  festive  energy  in  convulsive  hootings  and 
gymnastics.  Here  and  there  certain  indefatigable  spirits,  clad  all  in 
red  after  the  manner  of  devils  and  leaping  furiously  about  with 
torches,  were  supposed  to  affright  you.  But  they  shared  the  uni 
versal  geniality  and  bequeathed  me  no  midnight  fears  as  a  pre 
text  for  keeping  Lent,  the  carnevale  del  preti,  as  I  read  in  that 
profanely  radical  sheet  the  Capitate.  Of  this  too  I  have  been 
having  glimpses.  Going  lately  into  Santa  Francesca  Romana, 
the  picturesque  church  near  the  Temple  of  Peace,  I  found  a 
feast  for  the  eyes  —  a  dim  crimson-toned  light  through  curtained 
windows,  a  great  festoon  of  tapers  round  the  altar,  a  bulging 
girdle  of  lamps  before  the  sunken  shrine  beneath,  and  a  dozen 
white-robed  Dominicans  scattered  in  the  happiest  composition  on 
the  pavement.  It  was  better  than  the  moccoletti. 

1873- 


ROMAN   RIDES 


ROMAN  RIDES 


SHALL  always  remember  the  first  I  took: 
out  of  the  Porta  del  Popolo,  to  where  the 
Ponte  Molle,  whose  single  arch  sustains  a 
weight  of  historic  tradition,  compels  the 
sallow  Tiber  to  flow  between  its  four 
great-mannered  ecclesiastical  statues,  over 
the  crest  of  the  hill  and  along  the  old 
posting-road  to  Florence.  It  was  mild 
midwinter,  the  season  peculiarly  of  colour  on  the  Roman  Cam- 
pagna ;  and  the  light  was  full  of  that  mellow  purple  glow,  that 
tempered  intensity,  which  haunts  the  after-visions  of  those  who 
have  known  Rome  like  the  memory  of  some  supremely  irrespon 
sible  pleasure.  An  hour  away  I  pulled  up  and  at  the  edge  of  a 
meadow  gazed  away  for  some  time  into  remoter  distances.  Then 
and  there,  it  seemed  to  me,  I  measured  the  deep  delight  of  know 
ing  the  Campagna.  But  I  saw  more  things  in  it  than  I  can  easily 
tell.  The  country  rolled  away  around  me  into  slopes  and  dells 
of  long-drawn  grace,  chequered  with  purple  and  blue  and  bloom 
ing  brown.  The  lights  and  shadows  were  at  play  on  the  Sabine 
Mountains  —  an  alternation  of  tones  so  exquisite  as  to  be  con 
veyed  only  by  some  fantastic  comparison  to  sapphire  and  amber. 
In  the  foreground  a  conta<Jino  in  his  cloak  and  peaked  hat  jogged 


ITALIAN  HOURS 

solitary  on  his  ass;  and  here  and  there  in  the  distance,  among 
blue  undulations,  some  white  village,  some  grey  tower,  helped 
deliciously  to  make  the  picture  the  typical  "Italian  landscape" 
of  old-fashioned  art.  It  was  so  bright  and  yet  so  sad,  so  still 
and  yet  so  charged,  to  the  supersensuous  ear,  with  the  murmur 
of  an  extinguished  life,  that  you  could  only  say  it  was  intensely 
and  adorably  strange,  could  only  impute  to  the  whole  overarched 
scene  an  unsurpassed  secret  for  bringing  tears  of  appreciation  to 
no  matter  how  ignorant  —  archaeologically  ignorant  —  eyes.  To 
ride  once,  in  these  conditions,  is  of  course  to  ride  again  and  to 
allot  to  the  Campagna  a  generous  share  of  the  time  one  spends 
in  Rome. 

It  is  a  pleasure  that  doubles  one's  horizon,  and  one  can  scarcely 
say  whether  it  enlarges  or  limits  one's  impression  of  the  city 
proper.  It  certainly  makes  St.  Peter's  seem  a  trifle  smaller  and 
blunts  the  edge  of  one's  curiosity  in  the  Forum.  It  must  be  the 
effect  of  the  experience,  at  all  extended,  that  when  you  think  of 
Rome  afterwards  you  will  think  still  respectfully  and  regretfully 
enough  of  the  Vatican  and  the  Pincio,  the  streets  and  the  picture- 
making  street  life ;  but  will  even  more  wonder,  with  an  irrepressible 
contraction  of  the  heart,  when  again  you  shall  feel  yourself  bound 
ing  over  the  flower-smothered  turf,  or  pass  from  one  framed  pic 
ture  to  another  beside  the  open  arches  of  the  crumbling  aqueducts. 
You  look  back  at  the  City  so  often  from  some  grassy  hill-top  — 
hugely  compact  within  its  walls,  with  St.  Peter's  overtopping  all 
things  and  yet  seeming  small,  and  the  vast  girdle  of  marsh  and 
meadow  receding  on  all  sides  to  the  mountains  and  the  sea  —  that 

[218  ] 


ROMAN  RIDES 

you  come  to  remember  it  at  last  as  hardly  more  than  a  respectable 
parenthesis  in  a  great  sweep  of  generalisation.  Within  the  walls, 
on  the  other  hand,  you  think  of  your  intended  ride  as  the  most 
romantic  of  all  your  possibilities ;  of  the  Campagna  generally  as 
an  illimitable  experience.  One's  rides  certainly  give  Rome  an 
inordinate  scope  for  the  reflective  —  by  which  I  suppose  I  mean 
after  all  the  aesthetic  and  the  "esoteric"  —  life.  To  dwell  in  a 
city  which,  much  as  you  grumble  at  it,  is  after  all  very  fairly  a 
modern  city ;  with  crowds  and  shops  and  theatres  and  cafes  and 
balls  and  receptions  and  dinner-parties,  and  all  the  modern  con 
fusion  of  social  pleasures  and  pains ;  to  have  at  your  door  the  good 
and  evil  of  it  all ;  and  yet  to  be  able  in  half  an  hour  to  gallop  away 
and  leave  it  a  hundred  miles,  a  hundred  years,  behind,  and  to  look 
at  the  tufted  broom  glowing  on  a  lonely  tower-top  in  the  still  blue 
air,  and  the  pale  pink  asphodels  trembling  none  the  less  for  the 
stillness,  and  the  shaggy-legged  shepherds  leaning  on  their  sticks 
in  motionless  brotherhood  with  the  heaps  of  ruin,  and  the  scram 
bling  goats  and  staggering  little  kids  treading  out  wild  desert 
smells  from  the  top  of  hollow-sounding  mounds ;  and  then  to  come 
back  through  one  of  the  great  gates  and  a  couple  of  hours  later 
find  yourself  in  the  "world,"  dressed,  introduced,  entertained, 
inquiring,  talking  about  "  Middlemarch "  to  a  young  English 
lady  or  listening  to  Neapolitan  songs  from  a  gentleman  in  a  very 
low-cut  shirt  —  all  this  is  to  lead  in  a  manner  a  double  life  and 
to  gather  from  the  hurrying  hours  more  impressions  than  a  mind 
of  modest  capacity  quite  knows  how  to  dispose  of. 

I  touched  lately  upon  this  theme  with  a  friend  who,  I  fancied, 

[  219  ] 


ITALIAN   HOURS 

would  understand  me,  and  who  immediately  assured  me  that  he 
had  just  spent  a  day  that  this  mingled  diversity  of  sensation  made 
to  the  days  one  spends  elsewhere  what  an  uncommonly  good  novel 
may  be  to  the  daily  paper.  "There  was  an  air  of  idleness  about 
it,  if  you  will,"  he  said,  "and  it  was  certainly  pleasant  enough  to 
have  been  wrong.  Perhaps,  being  after  all  unused  to  long  stretches 
of  dissipation,  this  was  why  I  had  a  half-feeling  that  I  was  reading 
an  odd  chapter  in  the  history  of  a  person  very  much  more  of  a 
heros  de  roman  than  myself."  Then  he  proceeded  to  relate  how  he 
had  taken  a  long  ride  with  a  lady  whom  he  extremely  admired. 
"We  turned  off  from  the  Tor  di  Quinto  Road  to  that  castellated 
farm-house  you  know  of — once  a  Ghibelline  fortress  —  whither 
Claude  Lorraine  used  to  come  to  paint  pictures  of  which  the  sur 
rounding  landscape  is  still  so  artistically,  so  compositionally,  sug 
gestive.  We  went  into  the  inner  court,  a  cloister  almost,  with  the 
carven  capitals  of  its  loggia  columns,  and  looked  at  a  handsome 
child  swinging  shyly  against  the  half-opened  door  of  a  room  whose 
impenetrable  shadow,  behind  her,  made  her,  as  it  were,  a  sketch 
in  bituminous  water-colours.  We  talked  with  the  farmer,  a  hand 
some,  pale,  fever-tainted  fellow  with  a  well-to-do  air  that  did  n't 
in  the  least  deter  his  affability  from  a  turn  compatible  with  the 
acceptance  of  small  coin ;  and  then  we  galloped  away  and  away 
over  the  meadows  which  stretch  with  hardly  a  break  to  Veii.  The 
day  was  strangely  delicious,  with  a  cool  grey  sky  and  just  a  touch 
of  moisture  in  the  air  stirred  by  our  rapid  motion.  The  Cam- 
pagna,  in  the  colourless  even  light,  was  more  solemn  and  roman 
tic  than  ever ;  and  a  ragged  shepherd,  driving  a  meagre  straggling 

[220] 


ROMAN   RIDES 

flock,  whom  we  stopped  to  ask  our  way  of,  was  a  perfect  type  of 
pastoral,  weather-beaten  misery.  He  was  precisely  the  shepherd 
for  the  foreground  of  a  scratchy  etching.  There  were  faint  odours 
of  spring  in  the  air,  and  the  grass  here  and  there  was  streaked  with 
great  patches  of  daisies ;  but  it  was  spring  with  a  foreknowledge  of 
autumn,  a  day  to  be  enjoyed  with  a  substrain  of  sadness,  the  fore 
boding  of  regret,  a  day  somehow  to  make  one  feel  as  if  one  had 
seen  and  felt  a  great  deal  —  quite,  as  I  say,  like  a  heros  de  roman. 
Touching  such  characters,  it  was  the  illustrious  Pelham,  I  think, 
who,  on  being  asked  if  he  rode,  replied  that  he  left  those  violent 
exercises  to  the  ladies.  But  under  such  a  sky,  in  such  an  air,  over 
acres  of  daisied  turf,  a  long,  long  gallop  is  certainly  a  supersubtle 
joy.  The  elastic  bound  of  your  horse  is  the  poetry  of  motion ;  and 
if  you  are  so  happy  as  to  add  to  it  not  the  prose  of  companionship 
riding  comes  almost  to  affect  you  as  a  spiritual  exercise.  My  gal 
lop,  at  any  rate,"  said  my  friend,  "threw  me  into  a  mood  which 
gave  an  extraordinary  zest  to  the  rest  of  the  day."  He  was  to  go  to 

a  dinner-party  at  a  villa  on  the  edge  of  Rome,  and  Madam  X , 

who  was  also  going,  called  for  him  in  her  carriage.  "  It  was  a  long 
drive,"  he  went  on,  "  through  the  Forum,  past  the  Colosseum.  She 
told  me  a  long  story  about  a  most  interesting  person.  Toward  the 
end  my  eyes  caught  through  the  carriage  window  a  slab  of  rugged 
sculptures.  We  were  passing  under  the  Arch  of  Constantine.  In 
the  hall  pavement  of  the  villa  is  a  rare  antique  mosaic  —one  of 
the  largest  and  most  perfect;  the  ladies  on  their  way  to  the  draw 
ing-room  trail  over  it  the  flounces  of  Worth.  We  drove  home  late, 
and  there's  my  day." 

[221   ] 


ITALIAN   HOURS 

On  your  exit  from  most  of  the  gates  of  Rome  you  have  generally 
half-an-hour's  progress  through  winding  lanes,  many  of  which  are 
hardly  less  charming  than  the  open  meadows.  On  foot  the  walls 
and  high  hedges  would  vex  you  and  spoil  your  walk ;  but  in  the 
saddle  you  generally  overtop  them,  to  an  endless  peopling  of  the 
minor  vision.  Yet  a  Roman  wall  in  the  springtime  is  for  that 
matter  almost  as  interesting  as  anything  it  conceals.  Crumbling 
grain  by  grain,  coloured  and  mottled  to  a  hundred  tones  by  sun 
and  storm,  with  its  rugged  structure  of  brick  extruding  through 
its  coarse  complexion  of  peeling  stucco,  its  creeping  lacework  of 
wandering  ivy  starred  with  miniature  violets,  and  its  wild  fringe 
of  stouter  flowers  against  the  sky  —  it  is  as  little  as  possible  a 
blank  partition ;  it  is  practically  a  luxury  of  landscape.  At  the 
moment  at  which  I  write,  in  mid-April,  all  the  ledges  and  cor 
nices  are  wreathed  with  flaming  poppies,  nodding  there  as  if  they 
knew  so  well  what  faded  greys  and  yellows  are  an  offset  to  their 
scarlet.  But  the  best  point  in  a  dilapidated  enclosing  surface  of 
vineyard  or  villa  is  of  course  the  gateway,  lifting  its  great  arch  of 
cheap  rococo  scroll-work,  its  balls  and  shields  and  mossy  dish- 
covers  —  as  they  always  perversely  figure  to  me  —  and  flanked 
with  its  dusky  cypresses.  I  never  pass  one  without  taking  out  my 
mental  sketch-book  and  jotting  it  down  as  a  vignette  in  the  in 
substantial  record  of  my  ride.  They  are  as  sad  and  dreary  as  if 
they  led  to  the  moated  grange  where  Mariana  waited  in  despera 
tion  for  something  to  happen ;  and  it 's  easy  to  take  the  usual  in 
scription  over  the  porch  as  a  recommendation  to  those  who  enter 
to  renounce  all  hope  of  anything  but  a  glass  of  more  or  less  agree- 

[222   ] 


ROMAN   RIDES 

ably  acrid  vino  romano.  For  what  you  chiefly  see  over  the  walls 
and  at  the  end  of  the  straight  short  avenue  of  rusty  cypresses  are 
the  appurtenances  of  a  vigna  —  a  couple  of  acres  of  little  upright 
sticks  blackening  in  the  sun,  and  a  vast  sallow-faced,  scantily 
windowed  mansion,  whose  expression  denotes  little  of  the  life  of 
the  mind  beyond  what  goes  to  the  driving  of  a  hard  bargain  over 
the  tasted  hogsheads.  If  Mariana  is  there  she  certainly  has  no 
pile  of  old  magazines  to  beguile  her  leisure.  The  life  of  the  mind, 
if  the  term  be  in  any  application  here  not  ridiculous,  appears  to 
any  asker  of  curious  questions,  as  he  wanders  about  Rome,  the 
very  thinnest  deposit  of  the  past.  Within  the  rococo  gateway, 
which  itself  has  a  vaguely  aesthetic  self-consciousness,  at  the  end 
of  the  cypress  walk,  you  will  probably  see  a  mythological  group 
in  rusty  marble  —  a  Cupid  and  Psyche,  a  Venus  and  Paris,  an 
Apollo  and  Daphne  —  the  relic  of  an  age  when  a  Roman  pro 
prietor  thought  it  fine  to  patronise  the  arts.  But  I  imagine  you 
are  safe  in  supposing  it  to  constitute  the  only  allusion  savouring 
of  culture  that  has  been  made  on  the  premises  for  three  or  four 
generations. 

There  is  a  franker  cheerfulness  —  though  certainly  a  proper 
amount  of  that  forlornness  which  lurks  about  every  object  to 
which  the  Campagna  forms  a  background  —  in  the  primitive  little 
taverns  where,  on  the  homeward  stretch,  in  the  waning  light,  you 
are  often  glad  to  rein  up  and  demand  a  bottle  of  their  best.  Their 
best  and  their  worst  are  indeed  the  same,  though  with  a  shifting 
price,  and  plain  vino  bianco  or  vino  rosso  (rarely  both)  is  the  sole 
article  of  refreshment  in  which  they  deal.  There  is  a  ragged  bush 

[223] 


ITALIAN   HOURS 

over  the  door,  and  within,  under  a  dusky  vault,  on  crooked  cob 
ble-stones,  sit  half-a-dozen  contadini  in  their  indigo  jackets  and 
goatskin  breeches  and  with  their  elbows  on  the  table.  There  is 
generally  a  rabble  of  infantile  beggars  at  the  door,  pretty  enough 
in  their  dusty  rags,  with  their  fine  eyes  and  intense  Italian  smile, 
to  make  you  forget  your  private  vow  of  doing  your  individual  best 
to  make  these  people,  whom  you  like  so  much,  unlearn  their  old 
vices.  Was  Porta  Pia  bombarded  three  years  ago  that  Peppino 
should  still  grow  up  to  whine  for  a  copper  ?  But  the  Italian  shells 
had  no  direct  message  for  Peppino's  stomach — and  you  are  going 
to  a  dinner-party  at  a  villa.  So  Peppino  "points"  an  instant  for 
the  copper  in  the  dust  and  grows  up  a  Roman  beggar.  The  whole 
little  place  represents  the  most  primitive  form  of  hostelry ;  but 
along  any  of  the  roads  leading  out  of  the  city  you  may  find  es 
tablishments  of  a  higher  type,  with  Garibaldi,  superbly  mounted 
and  foreshortened,  painted  on  the  wall,  or  a  lady  in  a  low-necked 
dress  opening  a  fictive  lattice  with  irresistible  hospitality,  and  a 
yard  with  the  classic  vine-wreathed  arbour  casting  thin  shadows 
upon  benches  and  tables  draped  and  cushioned  with  the  white 
dust  from  which  the  highways  from  the  gates  borrow  most  of  their 
local  colour.  None  the  less,  I  say,  you  avoid  the  highroads,  and, 
if  you  are  a  person  of  taste,  don't  grumble  at  the  occasional  need 
of  following  the  walls  of  the  city.  City  walls,  to  a  properly  con 
stituted  American,  can  never  be  an  object  of  indifference;  and  it 
is  emphatically  "no  end  of  a  sensation  "  to  pace  in  the  shadow  of 
this  massive  cincture  of  Rome.  I  have  found  myself,  as  I  skirted 
its  base,  talking  of  trivial  things,  but  never  without  a  sudden  re- 

[224] 


ROMAN   RIDES 

flection  on  the  deplorable  impermanence  of  first  impressions.  A 
twelvemonth  ago  the  raw  plank  fences  of  a  Boston  suburb,  in 
scribed  with  the  virtues  of  healing  drugs,  bristled  along  my  hori 
zon  :  now  I  glance  with  idle  eyes  at  a  compacted  antiquity  in  which 
a  more  learned  sense  may  read  portentous  dates  and  signs  — 
Servius,  Aurelius,  Honorius.  But  even  to  idle  eyes  the  prodigious, 
the  continuous  thing  bristles  with  eloquent  passages.  In  some 
places,  where  the  huge  brickwork  is  black  with  time  and  certain 
strange  square  towers  look  down  at  you  with  still  blue  eyes,  the 
Roman  sky  peering  through  lidless  loopholes,  and  there  is  nothing 
but  white  dust  in  the  road  and  solitude  in  the  air,  I  might  take 
myself  for  a  wandering  Tartar  touching  on  the  confines  of  the 
Celestial  Empire.  The  wall  of  China  must  have  very  much  such 
a  gaunt  robustness.  The  colour  of  the  Roman  ramparts  is  every 
where  fine,  and  their  rugged  patchwork  has  been  subdued  by 
time  and  weather  into  a  mellow  harmony  that  the  brush  only  asks 
to  catch  up.  On  the  northern  side  of  the  city,  behind  the  Vatican, 
St.  Peter's  and  the  Trastevere,  I  have  seen  them  glowing  in  the 
late  afternoon  with  the  tones  of  ancient  bronze  and  rusty  gold. 
Here  at  various  points  they  are  embossed  with  the  Papal  insignia, 
the  tiara  with  its  flying  bands  and  crossed  keys ;  to  the  high  style 
of  which  the  grace  that  attaches  to  almost  any  lost  cause  —  even 
if  not  quite  the  "tender"  grace  of  a  day  that  is  dead  —  consider 
ably  adds  a  style.  With  the  dome  of  St.  Peter's  resting  on  their 
cornice  and  the  hugely  clustered  architecture  of  the  Vatican  rising 
from  them  as  from  a  terrace,  they  seem  indeed  the  valid  bulwark 
of  an  ecclesiastical  city.  Vain  bulwark,  alas!  sighs  the  sentimental 

[225  ] 


ITALIAN   HOURS 

tourist,  fresh  from  the  meagre  entertainment  of  this  latter  Holy 
Week.  But  he  may  find  monumental  consolation  in  this  neigh 
bourhood  at  a  source  where,  as  I  pass,  I  never  fail  to  apply  for 
it.  At  half-an-hour's  walk  beyond  Porta  San  Pancrazio,  beneath 
the  wall  of  the  Villa  Doria,  is  a  delightfully  pompous  ecclesi 
astical  gateway  of  the  seventeenth  century,  erected  by  Paul  V  to 
commemorate  his  restoration  of  the  aqueducts  through  which 
the  stream  bearing  his  name  flows  towards  the  fine  florid  portico 
protecting  its  clear-sheeted  outgush  on  the  crest  of  the  Janiculan. 
It  arches  across  the  road  in  the  most  ornamental  manner  of  the 
period,  and  one  can  hardly  pause  before  it  without  seeming  to 
assist  at  a  ten  minutes'  revival  of  old  Italy — without  feeling  as 
if  one  were  in  a  cocked  hat  and  sword  and  were  coming  up  to 
Rome,  in  another  mood  than  Luther's,  with  a  letter  of  recom 
mendation  to  the  mistress  of  a  cardinal. 

The  Campagna  differs  greatly  on  the  two  sides  of  the  Tiber ;  and 
it  is  hard  to  say  which,  for  the  rider,  has  the  greater  charm.  The 
half-dozen  rides  you  may  take  from  Porta  San  Giovanni  possess 
the  perfection  of  traditional  Roman  interest  and  lead  you  through 
a  far-strewn  wilderness  of  ruins  —  a  scattered  maze  of  tombs  and 
towers  and  nameless  fragments  of  antique  masonry.  The  land 
scape  here  has  two  great  features ;  close  before  you  on  one  side 
is  the  long,  gentle  swell  of  the  Alban  Hills,  deeply,  fantastically 
blue  in  most  weathers,  and  marbled  with  the  vague  white  masses 
of  their  scattered  towns  and  villas.  It  would  be  difficult  to  draw 
the  hard  figure  to  a  softer  curve  than  that  with  which  the  heights 
sweep  from  Albano  to  the  plain ;  this  a  perfect  example  of  the 

[226] 


ROMAN   RIDES 

classic  beauty  of  line  in  the  Italian  landscape  —  that  beauty 
which,  when  it  fills  the  background  of  a  picture,  makes  us  look  in 
the  foreground  for  a  broken  column  couched  upon  flowers  and  a 
shepherd  piping  to  dancing  nymphs.  At  your  side,  constantly,  you 
have  the  broken  line  of  the  Claudian  Aqueduct,  carrying  its  broad 
arches  far  away  into  the  plain.  The  meadows  along  which  it  lies 
are  not  the  smoothest  in  the  world  for  a  gallop,  but  there  is  no 
pleasure  greater  than  to  wander  near  it.  It  stands  knee-deep  in 
the  flower-strewn  grass,  and  its  rugged  piers  are  hung  with  ivy  as 
the  columns  of  a  church  are  draped  for  a  festa.  Every  archway 
is  a  picture,  massively  framed,  of  the  distance  beyond  —  of  the 
snow-tipped  Sabines  and  lonely  Soracte.  As  the  spring  advances 
the  whole  Campagna  smiles  and  waves  with  flowers ;  but  I  think 
they  are  nowhere  more  rank  and  lovely  than  in  the  shifting  shadow 
of  the  aqueducts,  where  they  muffle  the  feet  of  the  columns  and 
smother  the  half-dozen  brooks  which  wander  in  and  out  like 
silver  meshes  between  the  legs  of  a  file  of  giants.  They  make  a 
niche  for  themselves  too  in  every  crevice  and  tremble  on  the  vault 
of  the  empty  conduits.  The  ivy  hereabouts  in  the  springtime  is 
peculiarly  brilliant  and  delicate ;  and  though  it  cloaks  and  muffles 
these  Roman  fragments  far  less  closely  than  the  castles  and  abbeys 
of  England  it  hangs  with  the  light  elegance  of  all  Italian  vegeta 
tion.  It  is  partly  doubtless  because  their  mighty  outlines  are  still 
unsoftened  that  the  aqueducts  are  so  impressive.  They  seem  the 
very  source  of  the  solitude  in  which  they  stand;  they  look  like 
architectural  spectres  and  loom  through  the  light  mists  of  their 
grassy  desert,  as  you  recede  along  the  line,  with  the  same  insub- 

[227] 


ITALIAN   HOURS 

stantial  vastness  as  if  they  rose  out  of  Egyptian  sands.  It  is  a 
great  neighbourhood  of  ruins,  many  of  which,  it  must  be  confessed, 
you  have  applauded  in  many  an  album.  But  station  a  peasant 
with  sheepskin  coat  and  bandaged  legs  in  the  shadow  of  a  tomb 
or  tower  best  known  to  drawing-room  art,  and  scatter  a  dozen 
goats  on  the  mound  above  him,  and  the  picture  has  a  charm 
which  has  not  yet  been  sketched  away. 

The  other  quarter  of  the  Campagna  has  wider  fields  and 
smoother  turf  and  perhaps  a  greater  number  of  delightful  rides ; 
the  earth  is  sounder,  and  there  are  fewer  pitfalls  and  ditches.  The 
land  for  the  most  part  lies  higher  and  catches  more  wind,  and  the 
grass  is  here  and  there  for  great  stretches  as  smooth  and  level  as  a 
carpet.  You  have  no  Alban  Mountains  before  you,  but  you  have 
in  the  distance  the  waving  ridge  of  the  nearer  Apennines,  and  west 
of  them,  along  the  course  of  the  Tiber,  the  long  seaward  level  of 
deep-coloured  fields,  deepening  as  they  recede  to  the  blue  and 
purple  of  the  sea  itself.  Beyond  them,  of  a  very  clear  day,  you 
may  see  the  glitter  of  the  Mediterranean.  These  are  the  occasions 
perhaps  to  remember  most  fondly,  for  they  lead  you  to  enchanting 
nooks,  and  the  landscape  has  details  of  the  highest  refinement. 
Indeed  when  my  sense  reverts  to  the  lingering  impressions  of  so 
blest  a  time,  it  seems  a  fool's  errand  to  have  attempted  to  express 
them,  and  a  waste  of  words  to  do  more  than  recommend  the  reader 
to  go  citywards  at  twilight  of  the  end  of  March,  making  for  Porta 
Cavalleggieri,  and  note  what  he  sees.  At  this  hour  the  Campagna 
is  to  the  last  point  its  melancholy  self,  and  I  remember  roadside 
"  effects  "  of  a  strange  and  intense  suggestiveness.  Certain  mean, 

[228  ] 


ROMAN   RIDES 

mouldering  villas  behind  grass-grown  courts  have  an  indefinably 
sinister  look ;  there  was  one  in  especial  of  which  it  was  impossible 
not  to  argue  that  a  despairing  creature  must  have  once  committed 
suicide  there,  behind  bolted  door  and  barred  window,  and  that  no 
one  has  since  had  the  pluck  to  go  in  and  see  why  he  never  came 
out.  Every  wayside  mark  of  manners,  of  history,  every  stamp  of 
the  past  in  the  country  about  Rome,  touches  my  sense  to  a  thrill, 
and  I  may  thus  exaggerate  the  appeal  of  very  common  things. 
This  is  the  more  likely  because  the  appeal  seems  ever  to  rise  out  of 
heaven  knows  what  depths  of  ancient  trouble.  To  delight  in  the 
aspects  of  sentient  ruin  might  appear  a  heartless  pastime,  and  the 
pleasure,  I  confess,  shows  the  note  of  perversity.  The  sombre  and 
the  hard  are  as  common  an  influence  from  southern  things  as  the 
soft  and  the  bright,  I  think;  sadness  rarely  fails  to  assault  a  north 
ern  observer  when  he  misses  what  he  takes  for  comfort.  Beauty 
is  no  compensation  for  the  loss,  only  making  it  more  poignant. 
Enough  beauty  of  climate  hangs  over  these  Roman  cottages  and 
farm-houses  —  beauty  of  light,  of  atmosphere  and  of  vegetation ; 
but  their  charm  for  the  maker-out  of  the  stories  in  things  is  the 
way  the  golden  air  shows  off  their  desolation.  Man  lives  more 
with  Nature  in  Italy  than  in  New  or  than  in  Old  England ;  she 
does  more  work  for  him  and  gives  him  more  holidays  than  in  our 
short-summered  climes,  and  his  home  is  therefore  much  more  bare 
of  devices  for  helping  him  to  do  without  her,  forget  her  and  for 
give  her.  These  reflections  are  perhaps  the  source  of  the  character 
you  find  in  a  moss-coated  stone  stairway  climbing  outside  of  a 
wall ;  in  a  queer  inner  court,  befouled  with  rubbish  and  drearily 

[229 1 


ITALIAN  HOURS 

bare  of  convenience ;  in  an  ancient  quaintly  carven  well,  worked 
with  infinite  labour  from  an  overhanging  window;  in  an  arbour 
of  time-twisted  vines  under  which  you  may  sit  with  your  feet  in  the 
dirt  and  remember  as  a  dim  fable  that  there  are  races  for  which 
the  type  of  domestic  allurement  is  the  parlour  hearth-rug.  For 
reasons  apparent  or  otherwise  these  things  amuse  me  beyond  ex 
pression,  and  I  am  never  weary  of  staring  into  gateways,  of  linger 
ing  by  dreary,  shabby,  half-barbaric  farm-yards,  of  feasting  a 
foolish  gaze  on  sun-cracked  plaster  and  unctuous  indoor  shadows. 
I  must  n't  forget,  however,  that  it 's  not  for  wayside  effects  that 
one  rides  away  behind  St.  Peter's,  but  for  the  strong  sense  of 
wandering  over  boundless  space,  of  seeing  great  classic  lines  of 
landscape,  of  watching  them  dispose  themselves  into  pictures  so 
full  of  "  style  "  that  you  can  think  of  no  painter  who  deserves  to 
have  you  admit  that  they  suggest  him  —  hardly  knowing  whether 
it  is  better  pleasure  to  gallop  far  and  drink  deep  of  air  and  grassy 
distance  and  the  whole  delicious  opportunity,  or  to  walk  and 
pause  and  linger,  and  try  and  grasp  some  ineffaceable  memory  of 
sky  and  colour  and  outline.  Your  pace  can  hardly  help  falling 
into  a  contemplative  measure  at  the  time,  everywhere  so  wonder 
ful,  but  in  Rome  so  persuasively  divine,  when  the  winter  begins 
palpably  to  soften  and  quicken.  Far  out  on  the  Campagna,  early 
in  February,  you  feel  the  first  vague  earthly  emanations,  which 
in  a  few  weeks  come  wandering  into  the  heart  of  the  city  and 
throbbing  through  the  close,  dark  streets.  Springtime  in  Rome 
is  an  immensely  poetic  affair ;  but  you  must  stand  often  far  out  in 
the  ancient  waste,  between  grass  and  sky,  to  measure  its  deep, 

[230] 


ROMAN   RIDES 

full,  steadily  accelerated  rhythm.  The  winter  has  an  incontestable 
beauty,  and  is  pre-eminently  the  time  of  colour  —  the  time  when 
it  is  no  affectation,  but  homely  verity,  to  talk  about  the  "  purple  " 
tone  of  the  atmosphere.  As  February  comes  and  goes  your  purple 
is  streaked  with  green  and  the  rich,  dark  bloom  of  the  distance  be 
gins  to  lose  its  intensity.  But  your  loss  is  made  up  by  other  gains ; 
none  more  precious  than  that  inestimable  gain  to  the  ear  —  the 
disembodied  voice  of  the  lark.  It  comes  with  the  early  flowers, 
the  white  narcissus  and  the  cyclamen,  the  half-buried  violets  and 
the  pale  anemones,  and  makes  the  whole  atmosphere  ring  like  a 
vault  of  tinkling  glass.  You  never  see  the  source  of  the  sound,  and 
are  utterly  unable  to  localise  his  note,  which  seems  to  come  from 
everywhere  at  once,  to  be  some  hundred-throated  voice  of  the  air. 
Sometimes  you  fancy  you  just  catch  him,  a  mere  vague  spot 
against  the  blue,  an  intenser  throb  in  the  universal  pulsation  of 
light.  As  the  weeks  go  on  the  flowers  multiply  and  the  deep  blues 
and  purples  of  the  hills,  turning  to  azure  and  violet,  creep  higher 
toward  the  narrowing  snow-line  of  the  Sabines.  The  temperature 
rises,  the  first  hour  of  your  ride  you  feel  the  heat,  but  you  beguile 
it  with  brushing  the  hawthorn-blossoms  as  you  pass  along  the 
hedges,  and  catching  at  the  wild  rose  and  honeysuckle;  and  when 
you  get  into  the  meadows  there  is  stir  enough  in  the  air  to  lighten 
the  dead  weight  of  the  sun.  The  Roman  air,  however,  is  not  a 
tonic  medicine,  and  it  seldom  suffers  exercise  to  be  all  exhilarating. 
It  has  always  seemed  to  me  indeed  part  of  the  charm  of  the  latter 
that  your  keenest  consciousness  is  haunted  with  a  vague  languor. 
Occasionally  when  the  sirocco  blows  that  sensation  becomes  strange 

[231  ] 


ITALIAN  HOURS 

and  exquisite.  Then,  under  the  grey  sky,  before  the  dim  distances 
which  the  south-wind  mostly  brings  with  it,  you  seem  to  ride 
forth  into  a  world  from  which  all  hope  has  departed  and  in  which, 
in  spite  of  the  flowers  that  make  your  horse's  footfalls  soundless, 
nothing  is  left  save  some  queer  probability  that  your  imagination 
is  unable  to  measure,  but  from  which  it  hardly  shrinks.  This 
quality  in  the  Roman  element  may  now  and  then  "relax"  you 
almost  to  ecstasy ;  but  a  season  of  sirocco  would  be  an  overdose 
of  morbid  pleasure.  You  may  at  any  rate  best  feel  the  peculiar 
beauty  of  the  Campagna  on  those  mild  days  of  winter  when  the 
mere  quality  and  temper  of  the  sunshine  suffice  to  move  the  land 
scape  to  joy,  and  you  pause  on  the  brown  grass  in  the  sunny  still 
ness  and,  by  listening  long  enough,  almost  fancy  you  hear  the 
shrill  of  the  midsummer  cricket.  It  is  detail  and  ornament  that 
vary  from  month  to  month,  from  week  to  week  even,  and  make 
your  returns  to  the  same  places  a  constant  feast  of  unexpectedness; 
but  the  great  essential  features  of  the  prospect  preserve  throughout 
the  year  the  same  impressive  serenity.  Soracte,  be  it  January  or 
May,  rises  from  its  blue  horizon  like  an  island  from  the  sea  and 
with  an  elegance  of  contour  which  no  mood  of  the  year  can  deepen 
or  diminish.  You  know  it  well ;  you  have  seen  it  often  in  the  mel 
low  backgrounds  of  Claude ;  and  it  has  such  an  irresistibly  classic, 
academic  air  that  while  you  look  at  it  you  begin  to  take  your  sad 
dle  for  a  faded  old  arm-chair  in  a  palace  gallery.  A  month's  rides 
in  different  directions  will  show  you  a  dozen  prime  Claudes.  After 
I  had  seen  them  all  I  went  piously  to  the  Doria  gallery  to  refresh 
my  memory  of  its  two  famous  specimens  and  to  enjoy  to  the  ut- 

[232] 


ROMAN   RIDES 

most  their  delightful  air  of  reference  to  something  that  had  become 
a  part  of  my  personal  experience.  Delightful  it  certainly  is  to  feel 
the  common  element  in  one's  own  sensibility  and  those  of  a  genius 
whom  that  element  has  helped  to  do  great  things.  Claude  must 
have  haunted  the  very  places  of  one's  personal  preference  and 
adjusted  their  divine  undulations  to  his  splendid  scheme  of  ro 
mance,  his  view  of  the  poe.try  of  life.  He  was  familiar  with  aspects 
in  which  there  was  n't  a  single  uncompromising  line.  I  saw  a  few 
days  ago  a  small  finished  sketch  from  his  hand,  in  the  posses 
sion  of  an  American  artist,  which  was  almost  startling  in  its  clear 
reflection  of  forms  unaltered  by  the  two  centuries  that  have 
dimmed  and  cracked  the  paint  and  canvas. 

This  unbroken  continuity  of  the  impressions  I  have  tried  to 
indicate  is  an  excellent  example  of  the  intellectual  background 
of  all  enjoyment  in  Rome.  It  effectually  prevents  pleasure  from 
becoming  vulgar,  for  your  sensation  rarely  begins  and  ends  with 
itself;  it  reverberates  —  it  recalls,  commemorates,  resuscitates 
something  else.  At  least  half  the  merit  of  everything  you  enjoy 
must  be  that  it  suits  you  absolutely ;  but  the  larger  half  here  is 
generally  that  it  has  suited  some  one  else  and  that  you  can  never 
flatter  yourself  you  have  discovered  it.  It  has  been  addressed 
to  some  use  a  million  miles  out  of  your  range,  and  has  had  great 
adventures  before  ever  condescending  to  please  you.  It  was  in 
admission  of  this  truth  that  my  discriminating  friend  who  showed 
me  the  Claudes  found  it  impossible  to  designate  a  certain  delight 
ful  region  which  you  enter  at  the  end  of  an  hour's  riding  from 
Porta  Cavalleggieri  as  anything  but  Arcadia.  The  exquisite  cor- 

[233] 


ITALIAN   HOURS 

respondence  of  the  term  in  this  case  altogether  revived  its  faded 
bloom ;  here  veritably  the  oaten  pipe  must  have  stirred  the  windless 
air  and  the  satyrs  have  laughed  among  the  brookside  reeds.  Three 
or  four  long  grassy  dells  stretch  away  in  a  chain  between  low  hills 
over  which  delicate  trees  are  so  discreetly  scattered  that  each  one 
is  a  resting  place  for  a  shepherd.  The  elements  of  the  scene  are 
simple  enough,  but  the  composition  has  extraordinary  refinement. 
By  one  of  those  happy  chances  which  keep  observation  in  Italy 
always  in  her  best  humour  a  shepherd  had  thrown  himself  down 
under  one  of  the  trees  in  the  very  attitude  of  Melibceus.  He  had 
been  washing  his  feet,  I  suppose,  in  the  neighbouring  brook,  and 
had  found  it  pleasant  afterwards  to  roll  his  short  breeches  well  up 
on  his  thighs.  Lying  thus  in  the  shade,  on  his  elbow,  with  his 
naked  legs  stretched  out  on  the  turf  and  his  soft  peaked  hat  over 
his  long  hair  crushed  back  like  the  veritable  bonnet  of  Arcady, 
he  was  exactly  the  figure  of  the  background  of  this  happy  valley. 
The  poor  fellow,  lying  there  in  rustic  weariness  and  ignorance, 
little  fancied  that  he  was  a  symbol  of  old-world  meanings  to 
new-world  eyes. 

Such  eyes  may  find  as  great  a  store  of  picturesque  meanings  in 
the  cork-woods  of  Monte  Mario,  tenderly  loved  of  all  equestrians. 
These  are  less  severely  pastoral  than  our  Arcadia,  and  you  might 
more  properly  lodge  there  a  damosel  of  Ariosto  than  a  nymph  of 
Theocritus.  Among  them  is  strewn  a  lovely  wilderness  of  flowers 
and  shrubs,  and  the  whole  place  has  such  a  charming  woodland 
air,  that,  casting  about  me  the  other  day  for  a  compliment,  I  de 
clared  that  it  reminded  me  of  New  Hampshire.  My  compliment 

[234] 


ROMAN   RIDES 

had  a  double  edge,  and  I  had  no  sooner  uttered  it  than  I  smiled  — 
or  sighed  —  to  perceive  in  all  the  undiscriminated  botany  about 
me  the  wealth  of  detail,  the  idle  elegance  and  grace  of  Italy  alone, 
the  natural  stamp  of  the  land  which  has  the  singular  privilege 
of  making  one  love  her  unsanctified  beauty  all  but  as  well  as 
those  features  of  one's  own  country  toward  which  nature's  small 
allowance  doubles  that  of  one's  own  affection.  For  this  effect  of 
casting  a  spell  no  rides  have  more  value  than  those  you  take  in 
Villa  Doria  or  Villa  Borghese;  or  don't  take,  possibly,  if  you  pre 
fer  to  reserve  these  particular  regions  —  the  latter  in  especial  — 
for  your  walking  hours.  People  do  ride,  however,  in  both  villas, 
which  deserve  honourable  mention  in  this  regard.  Villa  Doria, 
with  its  noble  site,  its  splendid  views,  its  great  groups  of  stone- 
pines,  so  clustered  and  yet  so  individual,  its  lawns  and  flowers 
and  fountains,  its  altogether  princely  disposition,  is  a  place  where 
one  may  pace,  well  mounted,  of  a  brilliant  day,  with  an  agreeable 
sense  of  its  being  rather  a  more  elegant  pastime  to  balance  in  one's 
stirrups  than  to  trudge  on  even  the  smoothest  gravel.  But  at  Villa 
Borghese  the  walkers  have  the  best  of  it ;  for  they  are  free  of  those 
adorable  outlying  corners  and  bosky  byways  which  the  rumble 
of  barouches  never  reaches.  In  March  the  place  becomes  a  perfect 
epitome  of  the  spring.  You  cease  to  care  much  for  the  melancholy 
greenness  of  the  disfeatured  statues  which  has  been  your  chief 
winter's  intimation  of  verdure ;  and  before  you  are  quite  conscious 
of  the  tender  streaks  and  patches  in  the  great  quaint  grassy  arena 
round  which  the  Propaganda  students,  in  their  long  skirts,  wan 
der  slowly,  like  dusky^  seraphs  revolving  the  gossip  of  Paradise, 

[235] 


ITALIAN   HOURS 

you  spy  the  brave  little  violets  uncapping  their  azure  brows  be 
neath  the  high-stemmed  pines.  One's  walks  here  would  take  us 
too  far,  and  one's  pauses  detain  us  too  long,  when  in  the  quiet 
parts  under  the  wall  one  comes  across  a  group  of  charming  small 
school-boys  in  full-dress  suits  and  white  cravats,  shouting  over 
their  play  in  clear  Italian,  while  a  grave  young  priest,  beneath 
a  tree,  watches  them  over  the  top  of  his  book.  It  sounds  like  no 
thing,  but  the  force  behind  it  and  the  frame  round  it,  the  setting, 
the  air,  the  chord  struck,  make  it  a  hundred  wonderful  things. 


ROMAN  NEIGHBOURHOODS 


ROMAN  NEIGHBOURHOODS 


MADE  a  note  after  my  first  stroll  at  Al- 
bano  to  the  effect  that  I  had  been  talking 
of  the  "  picturesque  "  all  my  life,  but  that 
now  for  a  change  I  beheld  it.  I  had  been 
looking  all  winter  across  the  Campagna 
at  the  free-flowing  outline  of  the  Alban 
Mount,  with  its  half-dozen  towns  shining 
on  its  purple  side  even  as  vague  sun-spots 
in  the  shadow  of  a  cloud,  and  thinking  it  simply  an  agreeable 
incident  in  the  varied  background  of  Rome.  But  now  that  during 
the  last  few  days  I  have  been  treating  it  as  a  foreground,  have  been 
suffering  St.  Peter's  to  play  the  part  of  a  small  mountain  on  the 
horizon,  with  the  Campagna  swimming  mistily  through  the  am 
biguous  lights  and  shadows  of  the  interval,  I  find  the  interest  as 
great  as  in  the  best  of  the  by-play  of  Rome.  The  walk  I  speak 
of  was  just  out  of  the  village,  to  the  south,  toward  the  neighbour 
ing  town  of  L'  Ariccia,  neighbouring  these  twenty  years,  since 
the  Pope  (the  late  Pope,  I  was  on  the  point  of  calling  him)  threw 
his  superb  viaduct  across  the  deep  ravine  which  divides  it  from 
Albano.  At  the  risk  of  seeming  to  fantasticate  I  confess  that  the 
Pope's  having  built  the  viaduct  —  in  this  very  recent  antiquity  — 
made  me  linger  there  in  3  pensive  posture  and  marvel  at  the  march 

[  239  ] 


ITALIAN  HOURS 

of  history  and  at  Pius  the  Ninth's  beginning  already  to  profit 
by  the  sentimental  allowances  we  make  to  vanished  powers.  An 
ardent  nero  then  would  have  had  his  own  way  with  me  and  ob 
tained  a  frank  admission  that  the  Pope  was  indeed  a  father  to  his 
people.  Far  down  into  the  charming  valley  which  slopes  out  of  the 
ancestral  woods  of  the  Chigis  into  the  level  Campagna  winds  the 
steep  stone-paved  road  at  the  bottom  of  which,  in  the  good  old 
days,  tourists  in  no  great  hurry  saw  the  mules  and  oxen  tackled 
to  their  carriage  for  the  opposite  ascent.  And  indeed  even  an 
impatient  tourist  might  have  been  content  to  lounge  back  in  his 
jolting  chaise  and  look  out  at  the  mouldy  foundations  of  the  little 
city  plunging  into  the  verdurous  flank  of  the  gorge.  Questioned, 
as  a  cherisher  of  quaintness,  as  to  the  best  "bit  "  hereabouts,  I 
should  certainly  name  the  way  in  which  the  crumbling  black 
houses  of  these  ponderous  villages  plant  their  weary  feet  on  the 
flowery  edges  of  all  the  steepest  chasms.  Before  you  enter  one  of 
them  you  invariably  find  yourself  lingering  outside  its  pretentious 
old  gateway  to  see  it  clutched  and  stitched  to  the  stony  hillside  by 
this  rank  embroidery  of  the  wildest  and  bravest  things  that  grow. 
Just  at  this  moment  nothing  is  prettier  than  the  contrast  between 
their  dusky  ruggedness  and  the  tender,  the  yellow  and  pink  and 
violet  fringe  of  that  mantle.  All  this  you  may  observe  from  the 
viaduct  at  the  Ariccia ;  but  you  must  wander  below  to  feel  the  full 
force  of  the  eloquence  of  our  imaginary  papalino.  The  pillars  and 
arches  of  pale  grey  peperino  arise  in  huge  tiers  with  a  magnificent 
spring  and  solidity.  The  older  Romans  built  no  better;  and  the 
work  has  a  deceptive  air  of  being  one  of  their  sturdy  bequests 

[  240  ] 


ROMAN   NEIGHBOURHOODS 

which  help  one  to  drop  another  sigh  over  the  antecedents  the 
Italians  of  to-day  are  so  eager  to  repudiate.  Will  those  they  give 
their  descendants  be  as  good  ? 

At  the  Ariccia,  in  any  case,  I  found  a  little  square  with  a  couple 
of  mossy  fountains,  occupied  on  one  side  by  a  vast  dusky-faced 
Palazzo  Chigi  and  on  the  other  by  a  goodly  church  with  an  im 
posing  dome.  The  dome,  within,  covers  the  whole  edifice  and  is 
adorned  with  some  extremely  elegant  stucco-work  of  the  seven 
teenth  century.  It  gave  a  great  value  to  this  fine  old  decoration 
that  preparations  were  going  forward  for  a  local  festival  and  that 
the  village  carpenter  was  hanging  certain  mouldy  strips  of  crim 
son  damask  against  the  piers  of  the  vaults.  The  damask  might 
have  been  of  the  seventeenth  century  too,  and  a  group  of  peas 
ant-women  were  seeing  it  unfurled  with  evident  awe.  I  regarded 
it  myself  with  interest  —  it  seemed  so  the  tattered  remnant  of 
a  fashion  that  had  gone  out  for  ever.  I  thought  again  of  the 
poor  disinherited  Pope,  wondering  whether,  when  such  venerable 
frippery  will  no  longer  bear  the  carpenter's  nails,  any  more  will 
be  provided.  It  was  hard  to  fancy  anything  but  shreds  and 
patches  in  that  musty  tabernacle.  Wherever  you  go  in  Italy  you 
receive  some  such  intimation  as  this  of  the  shrunken  proportions  of 
Catholicism,  and  every  church  I  have  glanced  into  on  my  walks 
hereabouts  has  given  me  an  almost  pitying  sense  cf  it.  One  finds 
one's  self  at  last  —  without  fatuity,  I  hope  —  feeling  sorry  for  the 
solitude  of  the  remaining  faithful.  It 's  as  if  the  churches  had  been 
made  so  for  the  world,  in  its  social  sense,  and  the  world  had  so 
irrevocably  moved  away..  They  are  in  size  out  of  all  modern  pro- 

[241 1 


ITALIAN   HOURS 

portion  to  the  local  needs,  and  the  only  thing  at  all  alive  in  the 
melancholy  waste  they  collectively  form  is  the  smell  of  stale 
incense.  There  are  pictures  on  all  the  altars  by  respectable  third- 
rate  painters;  pictures  which  I  suppose  once  were  ordered  and 
paid  for  and  criticised  by  worshippers  who  united  taste  with  piety. 
At  Genzano,  beyond  the  Ariccia,  rises  on  the  grey  village  street 
a  pompous  Renaissance  temple  whose  imposing  nave  and  aisles 
would  contain  the  population  of  a  capital.  But  where  is  the  taste 
of  the  Ariccia  and  Genzano  ?  Where  are  the  choice  spirits  for 
whom  Antonio  Raggi  modelled  the  garlands  of  his  dome  and  a 
hundred  clever  craftsmen  imitated  Guido  and  Caravaggio  ?  Here 
and  there,  from  the  pavement,  as  you  pass,  a  dusky  crone  inter 
lards  her  devotions  with  more  profane  importunities,  or  a  grizzled 
peasant  on  rusty-jointed  knees,  tilted  forward  with  his  elbows 
on  a  bench,  reveals  the  dimensions  of  the  patch  in  his  blue 
breeches.  But  where  is  the  connecting  link  between  Guido  and 
Caravaggio  and  those  poor  souls  for  whom  an  undoubted  original 
is  only  a  something  behind  a  row  of  candlesticks,  of  no  very  clear 
meaning  save  that  you  must  bow  to  it  ?  You  find  a  vague  mem 
ory  of  it  at  best  in  the  useless  grandeurs  about  you,  and  you 
seem  to  be  looking  at  a  structure  of  which  the  stubborn  earth- 
scented  foundations  alone  remain,  with  the  carved  and  painted 
shell  that  bends  above  them,  while  the  central  substance  has 
utterly  crumbled  away. 

I  shall  seem  to  have  adopted  a  more  meditative  pace  than  befits 
a  brisk  constitutional  if  I  say  that  I  also  fell  a-thinking  before  the 
shabby  facade  of  the  old  Chigi  Palace.  But  it  seemed  somehow 

[242  ] 


ROMAN   NEIGHBOURHOODS 

in  its  grey  forlornness  to  respond  to  the  sadly  superannuated  ex 
pression  of  the  opposite  church ;  and  indeed  in  any  condition  what 
self-respecting  cherisher  of  quaintness  can  forbear  to  do  a  little 
romancing  in  the  shadow  of  a  provincial  palazzo  ?  On  the  face 
of  the  matter,  I  know,  there  is  often  no  very  salient  peg  to  hang  a 
romance  on.  A  sort  of  dusky  blankness  invests  the  establishment, 
which  has  often  a  rather  imbecile  old  age.  But  a  hundred  brood 
ing  secrets  lurk  in  this  inexpressive  mask,  and  the  Chigi  Palace 
did  duty  for  me  in  the  suggestive  twilight  as  the  most  haunted 
of  houses.  Its  basement  walls  sloped  outward  like  the  beginning 
of  a  pyramid,  and  its  lower  windows  were  covered  with  massive 
iron  cages.  Within  the  doorway,  across  the  court,  I  saw  the  pale 
glimmer  of  flowers  on  a  terrace,  and  I  made  much,  for  the  effect 
of  the  roof,  of  a  great  covered  loggia  or  belvedere  with  a  dozen 
window-panes  missing  or  mended  with  paper.  Nothing  gives  one 
a  stronger  impression  of  old  manners  than  an  ancestral  palace 
towering  in  this  haughty  fashion  over  a  shabby  little  town;  you 
hardly  stretch  a  point  when  you  call  it  an  impression  of  feudalism. 
The  scene  may  pass  for  feudal  to  American  eyes,  for  which  a 
hundred  windows  on  a  facade  mean  nothing  more  exclusive  than 
a  hotel  kept  (at  the  most  invidious)  on  the  European  plan.  The 
mouldy  grey  houses  on  the  steep  crooked  street,  with  their  black 
cavernous  archways  pervaded  by  bad  smells,  by  the  braying  of 
asses  and  by  human  intonations  hardly  more  musical,  the  haggard 
and  tattered  peasantry  staring  at  you  with  hungry-heavy  eyes,  the 
brutish-looking  monks  (there  are  still  enough  to  point  a  moral), 
the  soldiers,  the  mounted  constables,  the  dirt,  the  dreariness,  the 


ITALIAN  HOURS 

misery,  and  the  dark  over-grown  palace  frowning  over  it  all  from 
barred  window  and  guarded  gateway  —  what  more  than  all  this 
do  we  dimly  descry  in  a  mental  image  of  the  dark  ages  ?  For  all 
his  desire  to  keep  the  peace  with  the  vivid  image  of  things  if  it  be 
only  vivid  enough,  the  votary  of  this  ideal  may  well  occasionally 
turn  over  such  values  with  the  wonder  of  what  one  takes  them  as 
paying  for.  They  pay  sometimes  for  such  sorry  "facts  of  life." 
At  Genzano,  out  of  the  very  midst  of  the  village  squalor,  rises  the 
Palazzo  Cesarini,  separated  from  its  gardens  by  a  dirty  lane. 
Between  peasant  and  prince  the  contact  is  unbroken,  and  one 
would  suppose  Italian  good-nature  sorely  taxed  by  their  mutual 
allowances ;  that  the  prince  in  especial  must  cultivate  a  firm  im 
pervious  shell.  There  are  no  comfortable  townsfolk  about  him 
to  remind  him  of  the  blessings  of  a  happy  mediocrity  of  fortune. 
When  he  looks  out  of  his  window  he  sees  a  battered  old  peasant 
against  a  sunny  wall  sawing  off  his  dinner  from  a  hunch  of  black 
bread. 

I  must  confess,  however,  that  "feudal"  as  it  amused  me  to 
find  the  little  piazza  of  the  Ariccia,  it  appeared  to  threaten  in 
no  manner  an  exasperated  rising.  On  the  contrary,  the  afternoon 
being  cool,  many  of  the  villagers  were  contentedly  muffled  in 
those  ancient  cloaks,  lined  with  green  baize,  which,  when  tossed 
over  the  shoulder  and  surmounted  with  a  peaked  hat,  form  one 
of  the  few  lingering  remnants  of  "costume"  in  Italy;  others  were 
tossing  wooden  balls  light-heartedly  enough  on  the  grass  outside 
the  town.  The  egress  on  this  side  is  under  a  great  stone  archway 
thrown  out  from  the  palace  and  surmounted  with  the  family  arms. 

[  244  ] 


ROMAN   NEIGHBOURHOODS 

Nothing  could  better  confirm  your  theory  that  the  townsfolk  are 
groaning  serfs.  The  road  leads  away  through  the  woods,  like 
many  of  the  roads  hereabouts,  among  trees  less  remarkable  for 
their  size  than  for  their  picturesque  contortions  and  posturings. 
The  woods,  at  the  moment  at  which  I  write,  are  full  of  the  raw 
green  light  of  early  spring,  a  jour  vastly  becoming  to  the  various 
complexions  of  the  wild  flowers  that  cover  the  waysides.  I  have 
never  seen  these  untended  parterres  in  such  lovely  exuberance; 
the  sturdiest  pedestrian  becomes  a  lingering  idler  if  he  allows  them 
to  catch  his  eye.  The  pale  purple  cyclamen,  with  its  hood  thrown 
back,  stands  up  in  masses  as  dense  as  tulip-beds;  and  here  and 
there  in  the  duskier  places  great  sheets  of  forget-me-not  seem  to 
exhale  a  faint  blue  mist.  These  are  the  commonest  plants ;  there 
are  dozens  more  I  know  no  name  for  —  a  rich  profusion  in  especial 
of  a  beautiful  five-petalled  flower  whose  white  texture  is  pencilled 
with  hair-strokes  certain  fair  copyists  I  know  of  would  have  to 
hold  their  breath  to  imitate.  An  Italian  oak  has  neither  the  girth 
nor  the  height  of  its  English  brothers,  but  it  contrives  in  propor 
tion  to  be  perhaps  even  more  effective.  It  crooks  its  back  and 
twists  its  arms  and  clinches  its  hundred  fists  with  the  queerest 
extravagance,  and  wrinkles  its  bark  into  strange  rugosities  from 
which  its  first  scattered  sprouts  of  yellow  green  seem  to  break  out 
like  a  morbid  fungus.  But  the  tree  which  has  the  greatest  charm 
to  northern  eyes  is  the  cold  grey-green  ilex,  whose  clear  crepus 
cular  shade  drops  against  a  Roman  sun  a  veil  impenetrable,  yet 
not  oppressive.  The  ilex  has  even  less  colour  than  the  cypress,  but 
it  is  much  less  funereal, .and  a  landscape  in  which  it  is  frequent 

[245] 


ITALIAN  HOURS 

may  still  be  said  to  smile  faintly,  though  by  no  means  to  laugh. 
It  abounds  in  old  Italian  gardens,  where  the  boughs  are  trimmed 
and  interlocked  into  vaulted  corridors  in  which,  from  point  to 
point,  as  in  the  niches  of  some  dimly  frescoed  hall,  you  see  mil 
dewed  busts  stare  at  you  with  a  solemnity  which  the  even  grey  light 
makes  strangely  intense.  A  humbler  relative  of  the  ilex,  though 
it  does  better  things  than  help  broken-nosed  emperors  to  look  dig 
nified,  is  the  olive,  which  covers  many  of  the  neighbouring  hill 
sides  with  its  little  smoky  puffs  of  foliage.  A  stroke  of  composition 
I  never  weary  of  is  that  long  blue  stretch  of  the  Campagna  which 
makes  a  high  horizon  and  rests  on  this  vaporous  base  of  olive- 
tops.  A  reporter  intent  upon  a  simile  might  liken  it  to  the  ocean 
seen  above  the  smoke  of  watch-fires  kindled  on  the  strand. 

To  do  perfect  justice  to  the  wood-walk  away  from  the  Ariccia 
I  ought  to  touch  upon  the  birds  that  were  singing  vespers  as  I 
passed.  But  the  reader  would  find  my  rhapsody  as  poor  entertain 
ment  as  the  programme  of  a  concert  he  had  been  unable  to  attend. 
I  have  no  more  learning  about  bird-music  than  would  help  me 
to  guess  that  a  dull  dissyllabic  refrain  in  the  heart  of  the  wood 
came  from  the  cuckoo ;  and  when  at  moments  I  heard  a  twitter  of 
fuller  tone,  with  a  more  suggestive  modulation,  I  could  only  hope 
it  was  the  nightingale.  I  have  listened  for  the  nightingale  more 
than  once  in  places  so  charming  that  his  song  would  have  seemed 
but  the  articulate  expression  of  their  beauty,  and  have  never  heard 
much  beyond  a  provoking  snatch  or  two  —  a  prelude  that  came  to 
nothing.  In  spite  of  a  natural  grudge,  however,  I  generously  be 
lieve  him  a  great  artist  or  at  least  a  great  genius  —  a  creature  who 

[246] 


ROMAN   NEIGHBOURHOODS 

despises  any  prompting  short  of  absolute  inspiration.  For  the  rich, 
the  multitudinous  melody  around  me  seemed  but  the  offering  to 
my  ear  of  the  prodigal  spirit  of  tradition.  The  wood  was  ringing 
with  sound  because  it  was  twilight,  spring  and  Italy.  It  was  also 
because  of  these  good  things  and  various  others  besides  that  I 
relished  so  keenly  my  visit  to  the  Capuchin  convent  upon  which 
I  emerged  after  half-an-hour  in  the  wood.  It  stands  above  the 
town  on  the  slope  of  the  Alban  Mount,  and  its  wild  garden  climbs 
away  behind  it  and  extends  its  melancholy  influence.  Before  it 
is  a  small  stiff  avenue  of  trimmed  live-oaks  which  conducts  you  to 
a  grotesque  little  shrine  beneath  the  staircase  ascending  to  the 
church.  Just  here,  if  you  are  apt  to  grow  timorous  at  twilight,  you 
may  take  a  very  pretty  fright ;  for  as  you  draw  near  you  catch  be 
hind  the  grating  of  the  shrine  the  startling  semblance  of  a  gaunt 
and  livid  monk.  A  sickly  lamplight  plays  down  upon  his  face,  and 
he  stares  at  you  from  cavernous  eyes  with  a  dreadful  air  of  death 
in  life.  Horror  of  horrors,  you  murmur,  is  this  a  Capuchin  pen 
ance  ?  You  discover  of  course  in  a  moment  that  it  is  only  a  Capu 
chin  joke,  that  the  monk  is  a  pious  dummy  and  his  spectral  visage 
a  matter  of  the  paint-brush.  You  resent  his  intrusion  on  the  sur 
rounding  loveliness ;  and  as  you  proceed  to  demand  entertainment 
at  their  convent  you  pronounce  the  Capuchins  very  foolish  fellows. 
This  declaration,  as  I  made  it,  was  supported  by  the  conduct  of 
the  simple  brother  who  opened  the  door  of  the  cloister  in  obedience 
to  my  knock  and,  on  learning  my  errand,  demurred  about  admit 
ting  me  at  so  late  an  hour.  If  I  would  return  on  the  morrow 
morning  he  'd  be  most  .happy.  He  broke  into  a  blank  grin  when 

[247  ] 


ITALIAN  HOURS 

I  assured  him  that  this  was  the  very  hour  of  my  desire  and  that 
the  garish  morning  light  would  do  no  justice  to  the  view.  These 
were  mysteries  beyond  his  ken,  and  it  was  only  his  good-nature 
(of  which  he  had  plenty)  and  not  his  imagination  that  was  moved. 
So  that  when,  passing  through  the  narrow  cloister  and  out  upon 
the  grassy  terrace,  I  saw  another  cowled  brother  standing  with 
folded  hands  profiled  against  the  sky,  in  admirable  harmony  with 
the  scene,  I  questioned  his  knowing  the  uses  for  which  he  is  still 
most  precious.  This,  however,  was  surely  too  much  to  ask  of  him, 
and  it  was  cause  enough  for  gratitude  that,  though  he  was  there 
before  me,  he  was  not  a  fellow-tourist  with  an  opera-glass  slung 
over  his  shoulder.  There  was  support  to  my  idea  of  the  convent 
in  the  expiring  light,  for  the  scene  was  in  its  way  unsurpassable. 
Directly  below  the  terrace  lay  the  deep-set  circle  of  the  Alban  Lake, 
shining  softly  through  the  light  mists  of  evening.  This  beautiful 
pool  —  it  is  hardly  more  —  occupies  the  crater  of  a  prehistoric 
volcano,  a  perfect  cup,  shaped  and  smelted  by  furnace-fires.  The 
rim  of  the  cup,  rising  high  and  densely  wooded  round  the  placid 
stone-blue  water,  has  a  sort  of  natural  artificiality.  The  sweep 
and  contour  of  the  long  circle  are  admirable ;  never  was  a  lake  so 
charmingly  lodged.  It  is  said  to  be  of  extraordinary  depth;  and 
though  stone-blue  water  seems  at  first  a  very  innocent  substitute 
for  boiling  lava,  it  has  a  sinister  look  which  betrays  its  dangerous 
antecedents.  The  winds  never  reach  it  and  its  surface  is  never 
ruffled;  but  its  deep-bosomed  placidity  seems  to  cover  guilty 
secrets,  and  you  fancy  it  in  communication  with  the  capricious 
and  treacherous  forces  of  nature.  Its  very  colour  is  of  a  joyless 


ROMAN   NEIGHBOURHOODS 

beauty,  a  blue  as  cold  and  opaque  as  a  solidified  sheet  of  lava. 
Streaked  and  wrinkled  by  a  mysterious  motion  of  its  own,  it 
affects  the  very  type  of  a  legendary  pool,  and  I  could  easily  have 
believed  that  I  had  only  to  sit  long  enough  into  the  evening  to 
see  the  ghosts  of  classic  nymphs  and  naiads  cleave  its  sullen  flood 
and  beckon  me  with  irresistible  arms.  Is  it  because  its  shores 
are  haunted  with  these  vague  Pagan  influences  that  two  convents 
have  risen  there  to  purge  the  atmosphere  ?  From  the  Capuchin 
terrace  you  look  across  at  the  grey  Franciscan  monastery  of 
Palazzuola,  which  is  not  less  romantic  certainly  than  the  most 
obstinate  myth  it  may  have  exorcised.  The  Capuchin  garden  is 
a  wild  tangle  of  great  trees  and  shrubs  and  clinging,  trembling 
vines  which  in  these  hard  days  are  left  to  take  care  of  themselves; 
a  weedy  garden,  if  there  ever  was  one,  but  none  the  less  charm 
ing  for  that,  in  the  deepening  dusk,  with  its  steep  grassy  vistas 
struggling  away  into  impenetrable  shadow.  I  braved  the  shadow 
for  the  sake  of  climbing  upon  certain  little  flat-roofed  crumbling 
pavilions  that  rise  from  the  corners  of  the  further  wall  and  give 
you  a  wider  and  lovelier  view  of  lake  and  hills  and  sky. 

I  have  perhaps  justified  to  the  reader  the  mild  proposition  with 
which  I  started  —  convinced  him,  that  is,  that  Albano  is  worth 
a  walk.  It  may  be  a  different  walk  each  day,  moreover,  and  not 
resemble  its  predecessors  save  by  its  keeping  in  the  shade.  "  Gal 
leries  "  the  roads  are  prettily  called,  and  with  the  justice  that  they 
are  vaulted  and  draped  overhead  and  hung  with  an  immense 
succession  of  pictures.  As  you  follow  the  few  miles  from  Genzano 
to  Frascati  you  have  perpetual  views  of  the  Campagna  framed  by 
[  249  ] 


ITALIAN   HOURS 

clusters  of  trees ;  the  vast  iridescent  expanse  of  which  completes 
the  charm  and  comfort  of  your  verdurous  dusk.  I  compared  it 
just  now  to  the  sea,  and  with  a  good  deal  of  truth,  for  it  has  the 
same  incalculable  lights  and  shades,  the  same  confusion  of  glitter 
and  gloom.  But  I  have  seen  it  at  moments  —  chiefly  in  the  misty 
twilight  —  when  it  resembled  less  the  waste  of  waters  than  some 
thing  more  portentous,  the  land  itself  in  fatal  dissolution.  I  could 
believe  the  fields  to  be  dimly  surging  and  tossing  and  melting 
away  into  quicksands,  and  that  one's  very  last  chance  of  an  im 
pression  was  taking  place.  A  view,  however,  which  has  the  merit 
of  being  really  as  interesting  as  it  seems,  is  that  of  the  Lake  of 
Nemi;  which  the  enterprising  traveller  hastens  to  compare  with 
its  sister  sheet  of  Albano.  Comparison  in  this  case  is  particularly 
odious,  for  in  order  to  prefer  one  lake  to  the  other  you  have  to 
discover  faults  where  there  are  none.  Nemi  is  a  smaller  circle,  but 
lies  in  a  deeper  cup,  and  if  with  no  grey  Franciscan  pile  to  guard 
its  woody  shores,  at  least,  in  the  same  position,  the  little  high- 
perched  black  town  to  which  it  gives  its  name  and  which  looks 
across  at  Genzano  on  the  opposite  shore  as  Palazzuola  regards 
Castel  Gandolfo.  The  walk  from  the  Ariccia  to  Genzano  is  charm 
ing,  most  of  all  when  it  reaches  a  certain  grassy  piazza  from  which 
three  public  avenues  stretch  away  under  a  double  row  of  stunted 
and  twisted  elms.  The  Duke  Cesarini  has  a  villa  at  Genzano  —  I 
mentioned  it  just  now  —  whose  gardens  overhang  the  lake;  but 
he  has  also  a  porter  in  a  faded  rakish-looking  livery  who  shakes 
his  head  at  your  proffered  franc  unless  you  can  reinforce  it  with 
a  permit  countersigned  at  Rome.  For  this  annoying  complication 


ROMAN   NEIGHBOURHOODS 

of  dignities  he  is  justly  to  be  denounced;  but  I  forgive  him  for  the 
sake  of  that  ancestor  who  in  the  seventeenth  century  planted  this 
shady  walk.  Never  was  a  prettier  approach  to  a  town  than  by 
these  low-roofed  light-chequered  corridors.  Their  only  defect  is 
that  they  prepare  you  for  .a  town  of  rather  more  rustic  coquetry 
than  Genzano  exhibits.  It  has  quite  the  usual  allowance,  the  com 
mon  cynicism,  of  accepted  decay,  and  looks  dismally  as  if  its  best 
families  had  all  fallen  into  penury  together  and  lost  the  means 
of  keeping  anything  better  than  donkeys  in  their  great  dark, 
vaulted  basements  and  mending  their  broken  window-panes  with 
anything  better  than  paper.  It  was  on  the  occasion  of  this  drear 
Genzano  that  I  had  a  difference  of  opinion  with  a  friend  who 
maintained  that  there  was  nothing  in  the  same  line  so  pretty  in 
Europe  as  a  pretty  New  England  village.  The  proposition  seemed 
to  a  cherisher  of  quaintness  on  the  face  of  it  inacceptable ;  but 
calmly  considered  it  has  a  measure  of  truth.  I  am  not  fond  of 
chalk-white  painted  planks,  certainly;  I  vastly  prefer  the  dusky 
tones  of  ancient  stucco  and  peperino;  but  I  succumb  on  occa 
sion  to  the  charms  of  a  vine-shaded  porch,  of  tulips  and  dahlias 
glowing  in  the  shade  of  high-arching  elms,  of  heavy-scented  lilacs 
bending  over  a  white  paling  to  brush  your  cheek. 

"I  prefer  Siena  to  Lowell,"  said  my  friend;  "but  I  prefer 
Farmington  to  such  a  thing  as  this."  In  fact  an  Italian  village 
is  simply  a  miniature  Italian  city,  and  its  various  parts  imply  a 
town  of  fifty  times  the  size.  At  Genzano  are  neither  dahlias  nor 
lilacs,  and  no  odours  but  foul  ones.  Flowers  and  other  graces 
are  all  confined  to  the  high-walled  precincts  of  Duke  Cesarini,  to 

[251  ] 


ITALIAN   HOURS 

which  you  must  obtain  admission  twenty  miles  away.  The  houses 
on  the  other  hand  would  generally  lodge  a  New  England  cot 
tage,  porch  and  garden  and  high-arching  elms  included,  in  one  of 
their  cavernous  basements.  These  vast  grey  dwellings  are  all  of 
a  fashion  denoting  more  generous  social  needs  than  any  they  serve 
nowadays.  They  speak  of  better  days  and  of  a  fabulous  time 
when  Italy  was  either  not  shabby  or  could  at  least  "carry  off"  her 
shabbiness.  For  what  follies  are  they  doing  penance  ?  Through 
what  melancholy  stages  have  their  fortunes  ebbed  ?  You  ask  these 
questions  as  you  choose  the  shady  side  of  the  long  blank  street  and 
watch  the  hot  sun  glare  upon  the  dust-coloured  walls  and  pause 
before  the  fetid  gloom  of  open  doors. 

I  should  like  to  spare  a  word  for  mouldy  little  Nemi,  perched 
upon  a  cliff  high  above  the  lake,  at  the  opposite  side ;  but  after  all, 
when  I  had  climbed  up  into  it  from  the  water-side,  passing  beneath 
a  great  arch  which  I  suppose  once  topped  a  gateway,  and  counted 
its  twenty  or  thirty  apparent  inhabitants  peeping  at  me  from  black 
doorways,  and  looked  at  the  old  round  tower  at  whose  base  the 
village  clusters,  and  declared  that  it  was  all  queer,  queer,  desper 
ately  queer,  I  had  said  all  that  is  worth  saying  about  it.  Nemi  has 
a  much  better  appreciation  of  its  lovely  position  than  Genzano, 
where  your  only  view  of  the  lake  is  from  a  dunghill  behind  one  of 
the  houses.  At  the  foot  of  the  round  tower  is  an  overhanging  ter 
race,  from  which  you  may  feast  your  eyes  on  the  only  freshness 
they  find  in  these  dusky  human  hives  —  the  blooming  seam,  as 
one  may  call  it,  of  strong  wild  flowers  which  binds  the  crumbling 
walls  to  the  face  of  the  cliff.  Of  Rocca  di  Papa  I  must  say  as  little. 


ROMAN   NEIGHBOURHOODS 

It  consorted  generally  with  the  bravery  of  its  name ;  but  the  only 
object  I  made  a  note  of  as  I  passed  through  it  on  my  way  to  Monte 
Cavo,  which  rises  directly  above  it,  was  a  little  black  house  with  a 
tablet  in  its  face  setting  forth  that  Massimo  d'  Azeglio  had  dwelt 
there.  The  story  of  his  sojourn  is  not  the  least  attaching  episode 
in  his  delightful  Ricordi.  From  the  summit  of  Monte  Cavo  is  a 
prodigious  view,  which  you  may  enjoy  with  whatever  good-nature 
is  left  you  by  the  reflection  that  the  modern  Passionist  convent 
occupying  this  admirable  site  was  erected  by  the  Cardinal  of  York 
(grandson  of  James  II)  on  the  demolished  ruins  of  an  immemo 
rial  temple  of  Jupiter:  the  last  foolish  act  of  a  foolish  race.  For 
me  I  confess  this  folly  spoiled  the  convent,  and  the  convent  all 
but  spoiled  the  view ;  for  I  kept  thinking  how  fine  it  would  have 
been  to  emerge  upon  the  old  pillars  and  sculptures  from  the  lava 
pavement  of  the  Via  Triumphalis,  which  wanders  grass-grown 
and  untrodden  through  the  woods.  A  convent,  however,  which 
nothing  spoils  is  that  of  Palazzuola,  to  which  I  paid  my  respects 
on  this  same  occasion.  It  rises  on  a  lower  spur  of  Monte  Cavo, 
on  the  edge,  as  we  have  seen,  of  the  Alban  Lake,  and  though 
it  occupies  a  classic  site,  that  of  early  Alba  Longa,  it  displaced 
nothing  more  precious  than  memories  and  legends  so  dim  that  the 
antiquarians  are  still  quarrelling  about  them.  It  has  a  meagre 
little  church  and  the  usual  sham  Perugino  with  a  couple  of  tinsel 
crowns  for  the  Madonna  and  the  Infant  inserted  into  the  canvas; 
and  it  has  also  a  musty  old  room  hung  about  with  faded  portraits 
and  charts  and  queer  ecclesiastical  knick-knacks,  which  borrowed 
a  mysterious  interest  from  the  sudden  assurance  of  the  simple 

[253] 


ITALIAN   HOURS 

Franciscan  brother  who  accompanied  me  that  it  was  the  room 
of  the  Son  of  the  King  of  Portugal.  But  my  peculiar  pleasure 
was  the  little  thick-shaded  garden  which  adjoins  the  convent  and 
commands  from  its  massive  artificial  foundations  an  enchanting 
view  of  the  lake.  Part  of  it  is  laid  out  in  cabbages  and  lettuce, 
over  which  a  rubicund  brother,  with  his  frock  tucked  up,  was 
bending  with  a  solicitude  which  he  interrupted  to  remove  his  skull 
cap  and  greet  me  with  the  unsophisticated  sweet-humoured  smile 
that  every  now  and  then  in  Italy  does  so  much  to  make  you  forget 
the  ambiguities  of  monachism.  The  rest  is  occupied  by  cypresses 
and  other  funereal  umbrage,  making  a  dank  circle  round  an  old 
cracked  fountain  black  with  water-moss.  The  parapet  of  the 
terrace  is  furnished  with  good  stone  seats  where  you  may  lean  on 
your  elbows  to  gaze  away  a  sunny  half-hour  and,  feeling  the  gen 
eral  charm  of  the  scene,  declare  that  the  best  mission  of  such  a 
country  in  the  world  has  been  simply  to  produce,  in  the  way  of 
prospect  and  picture,  these  masterpieces  of  mildness.  Mild  here 
as  a  dream  the  whole  attained  effect,  mild  as  resignation,  mild 
as  one's  thoughts  of  another  life.  Such  a  session  was  n't  surely 
an  experience  of  the  irritable  flesh ;  it  was  the  deep  degustation, 
on  a  summer's  day,  of  something  immortally  expressed  by  a  man 
of  genius. 

From  Albano  you  may  take  your  way  through  several  ancient 
little  cities  to  Frascati,  a  rival  centre  of  villeggiatura,  the  road  fol 
lowing  the  hillside  for  a  long  morning's  walk  and  passing  through 
alternations  of  denser  and  clearer  shade  —  the  dark  vaulted  alleys 
of  ilex  and  the  brilliant  corridors  of  fresh-sprouting  oak.  The 

[254] 


CASTKI.     GAXDOI. ]•'(). 


ROMAN   NEIGHBOURHOODS 

Campagna  is  beneath  you  continually,  with  the  sea  beyond  Ostia  re 
ceiving  the  silver  arrows  of  the  sun  upon  its  chased  and  burnished 
shield,  and  mighty  Rome,  to  the  north,  lying  at  no  great  length 
in  the  idle  immensity  around  it.  The  highway  passes  below 
Castel  Gandolfo,  which  stands  perched  on  an  eminence  behind 
a  couple  of  gateways  surmounted  with  the  Papal  tiara  and  twisted 
cordon ;  and  I  have  more  than  once  chosen  the  roundabout  road 
for  the  sake  of  passing  beneath  these  pompous  insignia.  Castel 
Gandolfo  is  indeed  an  ecclesiastical  village  and  under  the  peculiar 
protection  of  the  Popes,  whose  huge  summer-palace  rises  in  the 
midst  of  it  like  a  rural  Vatican.  In  speaking  of  the  road  to  Fras- 
cati  I  necessarily  revert  to  my  first  impressions,  gathered  on  the  oc 
casion  of  the  feast  of  the  Annunziata,  which  falls  on  the  25th  of 
March  and  is  celebrated  by  a  peasants'  fair.  As  Murray  strongly 
recommends  you  to  visit  this  spectacle,  at  which  you  are  promised 
a  brilliant  exhibition  of  all  the  costumes  of  modern  Latium,  I  took 
an  early  train  to  Frascati  and  measured,  in  company  with  a  pro 
digious  stream  of  humble  pedestrians,  the  half-hour's  interval  to 
Grotta  Ferrata,  where  the  fair  is  held.  The  road  winds  along  the 
hillside,  among  the  silver-sprinkled  olives  and  through  a  charming 
wood  where  the  ivy  seemed  tacked  upon  the  oaks  by  women's 
fingers  and  the  birds  were  singing  to  the  late  anemones.  It  was 
covered  with  a  very  jolly  crowd  of  vulgar  pleasure-takers,  and  the 
only  creatures  not  in  a  state  of  manifest  hilarity  were  the  pitiful 
little  overladen,  overbeaten  donkeys  (who  surely  deserve  a  chap 
ter  to  themselves  in  any  description  of  these  neighbourhoods)  and 
the  horrible  beggars  who  were  thrusting  their  sores  and  stumps 


ITALIAN   HOURS 

at  you  from  under  every  tree.  Every  one  was  shouting,  singing, 
scrambling,  making  light  of  dust  and  distance  and  filling  the  air 
with  that  childlike  jollity  which  the  blessed  Italian  temperament 
never  goes  roundabout  to  conceal.  There  is  no  crowd  surely  at 
once  so  jovial  and  so  gentle  as  an  Italian  crowd,  and  I  doubt  if 
in  any  other  country  the  tightly  packed  third-class  car  in  which 
I  went  out  from  Rome  would  have  introduced  me  to  so  much 
smiling  and  so  little  swearing.  Grotta  Ferrata  is  a  very  dirty  little 
village,  with  a  number  of  raw  new  houses  baking  on  the  hot  hill 
side  and  nothing  to  charm  the  fond  gazer  but  its  situation  and  its 
old  fortified  abbey.  After  pushing  about  among  the  shabby  little 
booths  and  declining  a  number  of  fabulous  bargains  in  tinware, 
shoes  and  pork,  I  was  glad  to  retire  to  a  comparatively  uninvaded 
corner  of  the  abbey  and  divert  myself  with  the  view.  This  grey 
ecclesiastical  stronghold  is  a  thoroughly  scenic  affair,  hanging  over 
the  hillside  on  plunging  foundations  which  bury  themselves  among 
the  dense  olives.  It  has  massive  round  towers  at  the  corners  and 
a  grass-grown  moat,  enclosing  a  church  and  a  monastery.  The 
fore-court,  within  the  abbatial  gateway,  now  serves  as  the  public 
square  of  the  village  and  in  fair-time  of  course  witnesses  the  best 
of  the  fun.  The  best  of  the  fun  was  to  be  found  in  certain  great 
vaults  and  cellars  of  the  abbey,  where  wine  was  in  free  flow  from 
gigantic  hogsheads.  At  the  exit  of  these  trickling  grottos  shady 
trellises  of  bamboo  and  gathered  twigs  had  been  improvised,  and 
under  them  a  grand  guzzling  proceeded.  All  of  which  was  so  in 
the  fine  old  style  that  I  was  roughly  reminded  of  the  wedding- 
feast  of  Gamacho.  The  banquet  was  far  less  substantial  of  course, 

[256] 


ROMAN   NEIGHBOURHOODS 

but  it  had  a  note  as  of  immemorial  manners  that  could  n't  fail  to 
suggest  romantic  analogies  to  a  pilgrim  from  the  land  of  no  cooks. 
There  was  a  feast  of  reason  close  at  hand,  however,  and  I  was 
careful  to  visit  the  famous  frescoes  of  Domenichino  in  the  adjoin 
ing  church.  It  sounds  rather  brutal  perhaps  to  say  that,  when  I 
came  back  into  the  clamorous  little  piazza,  the  sight  of  the  peasants 
swilling  down  their  sour  wine  appealed  to  me  more  than  the  mas 
terpieces  —  Murray  calls  them  so  —  of  the  famous  Bolognese.  It 
amounts  after  all  to  saying  that  I  prefer  Teniers  to  Domenichino ; 
which  I  am  willing  to  let  pass  for  the  truth.  The  scene  under  the 
rickety  trellises  was  the  more  suggestive  of  Teniers  that  there  were 
no  costumes  to  make  it  too  Italian.  Murray's  attractive  statement 
on  this  point  was,  like  many  of  his  statements,  much  truer  twenty 
years  ago  than  to-day.  Costume  is  gone  or  fast  going;  I  saw 
among  the  women  not  a  single  crimson  bodice  and  not  a  couple 
of  classic  head-cloths.  The  poorer  sort,  dressed  in  vulgar  rags  of 
no  fashion  and  colour,  and  the  smarter  ones  in  calico  gowns  and 
printed  shawls  of  the  vilest  modern  fabric,  had  honoured  their 
dusky  tresses  but  with  rich  applications  of  grease.  The  men  are 
still  in  jackets  and  breeches,  and,  with  their  slouched  and  pointed 
hats  and  open-breasted  shirts  and  rattling  leather  leggings,  may 
remind  one  sufficiently  of  the  Italian  peasant  as  he  figured  in 
the  woodcuts  familiar  to  our  infancy.  After  coming  out  of  the 
church  I  found  a  delightful  nook  —  a  queer  little  terrace  before 
a  more  retired  and  tranquil  drinking-shop  —  where  I  called  for 
a  bottle  of  wine  to  help  me  to  guess  why  I  "drew  the  line"  at 
Domenichino. 

[257] 


ITALIAN  HOURS 

This  little  terrace  was  a  capricious  excrescence  at  the  end  of 
the  piazza,  itself  simply  a  greater  terrace;  and  one  reached  it, 
picturesquely,  by  ascending  a  short  inclined  plane  of  grass-grown 
cobble-stones  and  passing  across  a  little  dusky  kitchen  through 
whose  narrow  windows  the  light  of  the  mighty  landscape  beyond 
touched  up  old  earthen  pots.  The  terrace  was  oblong  and  so 
narrow  that  it  held  but  a  single  small  table,  placed  lengthwise; 
yet  nothing  could  be  pleasanter  than  to  place  one's  bottle  on 
the  polished  parapet.  Here  you  seemed  by  the  time  you  had 
emptied  it  to  be  swinging  forward  into  immensity  —  hanging 
poised  above  the  Campagna.  A  beautiful  gorge  with  a  twinkling 
stream  wandered  down  the  hill  far  below  you,  beyond  which 
Marino  and  Castel  Gandolfo  peeped  above  the  trees.  In  front 
you  could  count  the  towers  of  Rome  and  the  tombs  of  the  Appian 
Way.  I  don't  know  that  I  came  to  any  very  distinct  conclusion 
about  Domenichino;  but  it  was  perhaps  because  the  view  was 
perfection  that  he  struck  me  as  more  than  ever  mediocrity.  And 
yet  I  don't  think  it  was  one's  bottle  of  wine,  either,  that  made  one 
after  all  maudlin  about  him;  it  was  the  sense  of  the  foolishly 
usurped  in  his  tenure  of  fame,  of  the  derisive  in  his  ever  having 
been  put  forward.  To  say  so  indeed  savours  of  flogging  a  dead 
horse,  but  it  is  surely  an  unkind  stroke  of  fate  for  him  that  Murray 
assures  ten  thousand  Britons  every  winter  in  the  most  emphatic 
manner  that  his  Communion  of  St.  Jerome  is  the  "  second  finest 
picture  in  the  world.  If  this  were  so  one  would  certainly  here  in 
Rome,  where  such  institutions  are  convenient,  retire  into  the  very 
nearest  convent;  with  such  a  world  one  would  have  a  standing 

[258] 


ROMAN  NEIGHBOURHOODS 

quarrel.  And  yet  this  sport  of  destiny  is  an  interesting  case,  in 
default  of  being  an  interesting  painter,  and  I  would  take  a  mod 
erate  walk,  in  most  moods,  to  see  one  of  his  pictures.  He  is  so 
supremely  good  an  example  of  effort  detached  from  inspiration 
and  school-merit  divorced  from  spontaneity,  that  one  of  his  fine 
frigid  performances  ought  to  hang  in  a  conspicuous  place  in  every 
academy  of  design.  Few  things  of  the  sort  contain  more  urgent  les 
sons  or  point  a  more  precious  moral ;  and  I  would  have  the  head 
master  in  the  drawing-school  take  each  ingenuous  pupil  by  the 
hand  and  lead  him  up  to  the  Triumph  of  David  or  the  Chase  of 
Diana  or  the  red-nosed  Persian  Sibyl  and  make  him  some  such 
little  speech  as  the  following :  "  This  great  picture,  my  son,  was 
hung  here  to  show  you  how  you  must  never  paint;  to  give  you 
a  perfect  specimen  of  what  in  its  boundless  generosity  the  provi 
dence  of  nature  created  for  our  fuller  knowledge  —  an  artist  whose 
development  was  a  negation.  The  great  thing  in  art  is  charm, 
and  the  great  thing  in  charm  is  spontaneity.  Domenichino,  having 
talent,  is  here  and  there  an  excellent  model  —  he  was  devoted, 
conscientious,  observant,  industrious ;  but  now  that  we  've  seen 
pretty  well  what  can  simply  be  learned  do  its  best,  these  things 
help  him  little  with  us,  because  his  imagination  was  cold.  It  loved 
nothing,  it  lost  itself  in  nothing,  its  efforts  never  gave  it  the  heart 
ache.  It  went  about  trying  this  and  that,  concocting  cold  pictures 
after  cold  receipts,  dealing  in  the  second-hand,  in  the  ready-made, 
and  putting  into  its  performances  a  little  of  everything  but  itself. 
When  you  see  so  many  things  in  a  composition  you  might  suppose 
that  among  them  all  some  charm  might  be  born ;  yet  they  're  really 

[  259  1 


ITALIAN   HOURS 

but  the  hundred  mouths  through  which  you  may  hear  the  unhappy 
thing  murmur  'I'm  dead!'  It's  by  the  simplest  thing  it  has  that 
a  picture  lives  —  by  its  temper.  Look  at  all  the  great  talents, 
Domenichino  as  well  as  at  Titian ;  but  think  less  of  dogma  than 
of  plain  nature,  and  I  can  almost  promise  you  that  yours  will  re 
main  true."  This  is  very  little  to  what  the  aesthetic  sage  I  have 
imagined  might  say ;  and  we  are  after  all  unwilling  to  let  our  last 
verdict  be  an  unkind  one  on  any  great  bequest  of  human  effort. 
The  faded  frescoes  in  the  chapel  at  Grotta  Ferrata  leave  us  a 
memory  the  more  of  man's  effort  to  dream  beautifully ;  and  they 
thus  mingle  harmoniously  enough  with  our  multifold  impressions 
of  Italy,  where  dreams  and  realities  have  both  kept  such  pace 
and  so  strangely  diverged.  It  was  absurd  —  that  was  the  truth  — 
to  be  critical  at  all  among  the  appealing  old  Italianisms  round 
me  and  to  treat  the  poor  exploded  Bolognese  more  harshly  than, 
when  I  walked  back  to  Frascati,  I  treated  the  charming  old  water 
works  of  the  Villa  Aldobrandini.  I  confound  these  various  pro 
ducts  of  antiquated  art  in  a  genial  absolution,  and  should  like 
especially  to  tell  how  fine  it  was  to  watch  this  prodigious  fountain 
come  tumbling  down  its  channel  of  mouldy  rock-work,  through 
its  magnificent  vista  of  ilex,  to  the  fantastic  old  hemicycle  where  a 
dozen  tritons  and  naiads  sit  posturing  to  receive  it.  The  sky  above 
the  ilexes  was  incredibly  blue  and  the  ilexes  themselves  incredibly 
black;  and  to  see  the  young  white  moon  peeping  above  the  trees 
you  could  easily  have  fancied  it  was  midnight.  I  should  like 
furthermore  to  expatiate  on  Villa  Mondragone,  the  most  grandly 
impressive  hereabouts,  of  all  such  domestic  monuments.  The 

[260] 


ROMAN   NEIGHBOURHOODS 

great  Casino  in  the  midst  is  as  big  as  the  Vatican,  which  it  strik 
ingly  resembles,  and  it  stands  perched  on  a  terrace  as  vast  as  the 
parvise  of  St.  Peter's,  looking  straight  away  over  black  cypress- 
tops  into  the  shining  vastness  of  the  Campagna.  Everything 
somehow  seemed  immense  and  solemn;  there  was  nothing  small 
but  certain  little  nestling  blue  shadows  on  the  Sabine  Mountains, 
to  which  the  terrace  seems  to  carry  you  wonderfully  near.  The 
place  has  been  for  some  time  lost  to  private  uses,  since  it  figures 
fantastically  in  a  novel  of  George  Sand  —  La  Daniella  —  and 
now,  in  quite  another  way,  as  a  Jesuit  college  for  boys.  The  after 
noon  was  perfect,  and  as  it  waned  it  filled  the  dark  alleys  with 
a  wonderful  golden  haze.  Into  this  came  leaping  and  shouting 
a  herd  of  little  collegians  with  a  couple  of  long-skirted  Jesuits 
striding  at  their  heels.  We  all  know  —  I  make  the  point  for  my 
antithesis  —  the  monstrous  practices  of  these  people ;  yet  as  I 
watched  the  group  I  verily  believe  I  declared  that  if  I  had  a  little 
son  he  should  go  to  Mondragone  and  receive  their  crooked  teach 
ings  for  the  sake  of  the  other  memories,  the  avenues  of  cypress 
and  ilex,  the  view  of  the  Campagna,  the  atmosphere  of  antiquity. 
But  doubtless  when  a  sense  of  "mere  character,"  shameless 
incomparable  character,  has  brought  one  to  this  it  is  time  one 
should  pause. 


THE  AFTER-SEASON   IN   ROME 


THE  AFTER- SEASON  IN  ROME 


NE  may  at  the  blest  end  of  May  say  with 
out  injustice  to  anybody  that  the  state  of 
mind  of  many  a  forestiero  in  Rome  is  one 
of  intense  impatience  for  the  moment  when 
all  other  forestieri  shall  have  taken  them 
selves  off.  One  may  confess  to  this  state 
of  mind  and  be  no  misanthrope.  The 
place  has  passed  so  completely  for  the 
winter  months  into  the  hands  of  the  barbarians  that  that  estima 
ble  character  the  passionate  pilgrim  finds  it  constantly  harder  to 
keep  his  passion  clear.  He  has  a  rueful  sense  of  impressions  per 
verted  and  adulterated;  the  all-venerable  visage  disconcerts  us 
by  a  vain  eagerness  to  see  itself  mirrored  in  English,  American, 
German  eyes.  It  is  n't  simply  that  you  are  never  first  or  never 
alone  at  the  classic  or  historic  spots  where  you  have  dreamt  of 
persuading  the  shy  genius  loci  into  confidential  utterance ;  it  is  n't 
simply  that  St.  Peter's,  the  Vatican,  the  Palatine,  are  for  ever 
ringing  with  the  false  note  of  the  languages  without  style :  it  is  the 
general  oppressive  feeling  that  the  city  of  the  soul  has  become  for 
the  time  a  monstrous  mixture  of  watering-place  and  curiosity- 
shop  and  that  its  most  ardent  life  is  that  of  the  tourists  who  haggle 
over  false  intaglios  and  yawn  through  palaces  and  temples.  But 

[265  ] 


ITALIAN  HOURS 

you  are  told  of  a  happy  time  when  these  abuses  begin  to  pass 
away,  when  Rome  becomes  Rome  again  and  you  may  have  her  all 
to  yourself.  "You  may  like  her  more  or  less  now,"  I  was  assured 
at  the  height  of  the  season;  "but  you  must  wait  till  the  month 
of  May,  when  she'll  give  you  all  she  has,  to  love  her.  Then 
the  foreigners,  or  the  excess  of  them,  are  gone ;  the  galleries  and 
ruins  are  empty,  and  the  place,"  said  my  informant,  who  was 
a  happy  Frenchman  of  the  Academic  de  France,  "renatt  a  elle- 
meme"  Indeed  I  was  haunted  all  winter  by  an  irresistible  pre 
vision  of  what  Rome  must  be  in  declared  spring.  Certain  charm 
ing  places  seemed  to  murmur :  "  Ah,  this  is  nothing !  Come  back 
at  the  right  weeks  and  see  the  sky  above  us  almost  black  with  its 
excess  of  blue,  and  the  new  grass  already  deep,  but  still  vivid,  and 
the  white  roses  tumble  in  odorous  spray  and  the  warm  radiant  air 
distil  gold  for  the  smelting-pot  that  the  genius  loci  then  dips  his 
brush  into  before  making  play  with  it,  in  his  inimitable  way,  for 
the  general  effect  of  complexion." 

A  month  ago  I  spent  a  week  in  the  country,  and  on  my  return, 
the  first  time  I  approached  the  Corso,  became  conscious  of  a 
change.  Something  delightful  had  happened,  to  which  at  first  I 
could  n't  give  a  name,  but  which  presently  shone  out  as  the  fact 
that  there  were  but  half  as  many  people  present  and  that  these 
were  chiefly  the  natural  or  the  naturalised.  We  had  been  docked 
of  half  our  irrelevance,  our  motley  excess,  and  now  physically, 
morally,  aesthetically  there  was  elbow-room.  In  the  afternoon  I 
went  to  the  Pincio,  and  the  Pincio  was  almost  dull.  The  band 
was  playing  to  a  dozen  ladies  who  lay  in  landaus  poising  their  lace- 

[266  ] 


THE  AFTER-SEASON   IN   ROME 

fringed  parasols;  but  they  had  scarce  more  than  a  light-gloved 
dandy  apiece  hanging  over  their  carriage  doors.  By  the  parapet 
to  the  great  terrace  that  sweeps  the  city  stood  but  three  or  four 
interlopers  looking  at  the  sunset  and  with  their  Baedekers  only 
just  showing  in  their  pockets  —  the  sunsets  not  being  down  among 
the  tariffed  articles  in  these  precious  volumes.  I  went  so  far  as  to 
hope  for  them  that,  like  myself,  they  were,  under  every  precau 
tion,  taking  some  amorous  intellectual  liberty  with  the  scene. 

Practically  I  violate  thus  the  instinct  of  monopoly,  since  it's 
a  shame  not  to  publish  that  Rome  in  May  is  indeed  exquisitely 
worth  your  patience.  I  have  just  been  so  gratified  at  finding 
myself  in  undisturbed  possession  for  a  couple  of  hours  of  the 
Museum  of  the  Lateran  that  I  can  afford  to  be  magnanimous. 
It's  almost  as  if  the  old  all-papal  paradise  had  come  back.  The 
weather  for  a  month  has  been  perfect,  the  sky  an  extravagance 
of  blue,  the  air  lively  enough,  the  nights  cool,  nippingly  cool, 
and  the  whole  ancient  greyness  lighted  with  an  irresistible  smile. 
Rome,  which  in  some  moods,  especially  to  new-comers,  seems 
a  place  of  almost  sinister  gloom,  has  an  occasional  art,  as  one 
knows  her  better,  of  brushing  away  care  by  the  grand  gesture 
with  which  some  splendid  impatient  mourning  matron  —  just  the 
Niobe  of  Nations,  surviving,  emerging  and  looking  about  her 
again  —  might  pull  off  and  cast  aside  an  oppression  of  muffling 
crape.  This  admirable  power  still  temperamentally  to  react  and 
take  notice  lurks  in  all  her  darkness  and  dirt  and  decay  —  a 
something  more  careless  and  hopeless  than  our  thrifty  northern 
cheer,  and  yet  more  genial  and  urbane  than  the  Parisian  spirit  of 

[267  ] 


ITALIAN   HOURS 

blague.  The  collective  Roman  nature  is  a  healthy  and  hearty 
one,  and  you  feel  it  abroad  in  the  streets  even  when  the  sirocco 
blows  and  the  medium  of  life  seems  to  proceed  more  or  less  from 
the  mouth  of  a  furnace.  But  who  shall  analyse  even  the  simplest 
Roman  impression  ?  It  is  compounded  of  so  many  things,  it  says 
so  much,  it  involves  so  much,  it  so  quickens  the  intelligence  and 
so  flatters  the  heart,  that  before  we  fairly  grasp  the  case  the  ima 
gination  has  marked  it  for  her  own  and  exposed  us  to  a  perilous 
likelihood  of  talking  nonsense  about  it. 

The  smile  of  Rome,  as  I  have  called  it,  and  its  insidious  mes 
sage  to  those  who  incline  to  ramble  irresponsibly  and  take  things 
as  they  come,  is  ushered  in  with  the  first  breath  of  spring,  and 
then  grows  and  grows  with  the  advancing  season  till  it  wraps  the 
whole  place  in  its  tenfold  charm.  As  the  process  develops  you  can 
do  few  better  things  than  go  often  to  Villa  Borghese  and  sit  on  the 
grass  —  on  a  stout  bit  of  drapery  —  and  watch  its  exquisite  stages. 
It  has  a  frankness  and  a  sweetness  beyond  any  relenting  of  our 
clumsy  climates  even  when  ours  leave  off  their  damnable  faces  and 
begin.  Nature  departs  from  every  reserve  with  a  confidence  that 
leaves  one  at  a  loss  where,  as  it  were,  to  look  —  leaves  one,  as  I 
say,  nothing  to  do  but  to  lay  one's  head  among  the  anemones  at 
the  base  of  a  high-stemmed  pine  and  gaze  up  crestward  and  sky 
ward  along  its  slanting  silvery  column.  You  may  watch  the  whole 
business  from  a  dozen  of  these  choice  standpoints  and  have  a  dif 
ferent  villa  for  it  every  day  in  the  week.  The  Doria,  the  Ludovisi, 
the  Medici,  the  Albani,  the  Wolkonski,  the  Chigi,  the  Mellini, 
the  Massimo  —  there  are  more  of  them,  with  all  their  sights 

[268  ] 


THE   AFTER-SEASON   IN   ROME 

and  sounds  and  odours  and  memories,  than  you  have  senses  for. 
But  I  prefer  none  of  them  to  the  Borghese,  which  is  free  to  all 
the  world  at  all  times  and  yet  never  crowded ;  for  when  the  whirl 
of  carriages  is  great  in  the  middle  regions  you  may  find  a  hundred 
untrodden  spots  and  silent  corners,  tenanted  at  the  worst  by  a 
group  of  those  long-skirted  young  Propagandists  who  stalk  about 
with  solemn  angularity,  each  with  a  book  under  his  arm,  like 
silhouettes  from  a  mediaeval  missal,  and  "compose"  so  extremely 
well  with  the  still  more  processional  cypresses  and  with  stretches 
of  golden-russet  wall  overtopped  by  ultramarine.  And  yet  if  the 
Borghese  is  good  the  Medici  is  strangely  charming,  and  you  may 
stand  in  the  little  belvedere  which  rises  with  such  surpassing 
oddity  out  of  the  dusky  heart  of  the  Boschetto  at  the  latter  estab 
lishment  —  a  miniature  presentation  of  the  wood  of  the  Sleep 
ing  Beauty  —  and  look  across  at  the  Ludovisi  pines  lifting  their 
crooked  parasols  into  a  sky  of  what  a  painter  would  call  the  most 
morbid  blue,  and  declare  that  the  place  where  they  grow  is  the 
most  delightful  in  the  world.  Villa  Ludovisi  has  been  all  winter 
the  residence  of  the  lady  familiarly  known  in  Roman  society  as 
"Rosina,"  Victor  Emmanuel's  morganatic  wife,  the  only  famil 
iarity,  it  would  seem,  that  she  allows,  for  the  grounds  were  rig 
idly  closed,  to  the  inconsolable  regret  of  old  Roman  sojourners. 
Just  as  the  nightingales  began  to  sing,  however,  the  quasi-august 
padrona  departed,  and  the  public,  with  certain  restrictions,  have 
been  admitted  to  hear  them.  The  place  takes,  where  it  lies,  a 
princely  ease,  and  there  could  be  no  better  example  of  the  expan 
sive  tendencies  of  ancient  privilege  than  the  fact  that  its  whole 

[269] 


ITALIAN   HOURS 

vast  extent  is  contained  by  the  city  walls.  It  has  in  this  respect 
Very  much  the  same  enviable  air  of  having  got  up  early  that 
marks  the  great  intramural  demesne  of  Magdalen  College  at 
Oxford.  The  stern  old  ramparts  of  Rome  form  the  outer  enclosure 
of  the  villa,  and  hence  a  series  of  "striking  scenic  effects"  which 
it  would  be  unscrupulous  flattery  to  say  you  can  imagine.  The 
grounds  are  laid  out  in  the  formal  last-century  manner;  but 
nowhere  do  the  straight  black  cypresses  lead  off  the  gaze  into 
vistas  of  a  melancholy  more  charged  with  associations  —  poetic, 
romantic,  historic;  nowhere  are  there  grander,  smoother  walls 
of  laurel  and  myrtle. 

I  recently  spent  an  afternoon  hour  at  the  little  Protestant  ceme 
tery  close  to  St.  Paul's  Gate,  where  the  ancient  and  the  modern 
world  are  insidiously  contrasted.  They  make  between  them  one 
of  the  solemn  places  of  Rome  —  although  indeed  when  funereal 
things  are  so  interfused  it  seems  ungrateful  to  call  them  sad.  Here 
is  a  mixture  of  tears  and  smiles,  of  stones  and  flowers,  of  mourning 
cypresses  and  radiant  sky,  which  gives  us  the  impression  of  our 
looking  back  at  death  from  the  brighter  side  of  the  grave.  The 
cemetery  nestles  in  an  angle  of  the  city  wall,  and  the  older  graves 
are  sheltered  by  a  mass  of  ancient  brickwork,  through  whose 
narrow  loopholes  you  peep  at  the  wide  purple  of  the  Campagna. 
Shelley's  grave  is  here,  buried  in  roses  —  a  happy  grave  every 
way  for  the  very  type  and  figure  of  the  Poet.  Nothing  could  be 
more  impenetrably  tranquil  than  this  little  corner  in  the  bend  of 
the  protecting  rampart,  where  a  cluster  of  modern  ashes  is  held 
tenderly  in  the  rugged  hand  of  the  Past.  The  past  is  tremendously 

[270] 


THE  AFTER-SEASON   IN   ROME 

embodied  in  the  hoary  pyramid  of  Caius  Cestius,  which  rises  hard 
by,  half  within  the  wall  and  half  without,  cutting  solidly  into  the 
solid  blue  of  the  sky  and  casting  its  pagan  shadow  upon  the  grass 
of  English  graves  —  that  of  Keats,  among  them  —  with  an  effect 
of  poetic  justice.  It  is  a  wonderful  confusion  of  mortality  and 
a  grim  enough  admonition  of  our  helpless  promiscuity  in  the 
crucible  of  time.  But  the  most  touching  element  of  all  is  the 
appeal  of  the  pious  English  inscriptions  among  all  these  Roman 
memories ;  touching  because  of  their  universal  expression  of  that 
trouble  within  trouble,  misfortune  in  a  foreign  land.  Something 
special  stirs  the  heart  through  the  fine  Scriptural  language  in 
which  everything  is  recorded.  The  echoes  of  massive  Latinity  with 
which  the  atmosphere  is  charged  suggest  nothing  more  majestic 
and  monumental.  I  may  seem  unduly  to  refine,  but  the  injunction 
to  the  reader  in  the  monument  to  Miss  Bathurst,  drowned  in  the 
Tiber  in  1824,  "  If  thou  art  young  and  lovely,  build  not  thereon, 
for  she  who  lies  beneath  thy  feet  in  death  was  the  loveliest  flower 
ever  cropt  in  its  bloom,"  affects  us  irresistibly  as  a  case  for  tears 
on  the  spot.  The  whole  elaborate  inscription  indeed  says  some 
thing  over  and  beyond  all  it  does  say.  The  English  have  the  repu 
tation  of  being  the  most  reticent  people  in  the  world,  and  as  there 
is  no  smoke  without  fire  I  suppose  they  have  done  something  to 
deserve  it;  yet  who  can  say  that  one  doesn't  constantly  meet 
the  most  startling  examples  of  the  insular  faculty  to  "gush"  ?  In 
this  instance  the  mother  of  the  deceased  takes  the  public  into  her 
confidence  with  surprising  frankness  and  omits  no  detail,  seiz 
ing  the  opportunity  to  mention  by  the  way  that  she  had  already 

[271  ] 


ITALIAN  HOURS 

lost  her  husband  by  a  most  mysterious  visitation.  The  appeal 
to  one's  attention  and  the  confidence  in  it  are  withal  most  mov 
ing.  The  whole  record  has  an  old-fashioned  gentility  that  makes 
its  frankness  tragic.  You  seem  to  hear  the  garrulity  of  passion 
ate  grief. 

To  be  choosing  these  positive  commonplaces  of  the  Roman 
tone  for  a  theme  when  there  are  matters  of  modern  moment  going 
on  may  seem  none  the  less  to  require  an  apology.  But  I  make 
no  claim  to  your  special  correspondent's  faculty  for  getting  an 
"  inside  "  view  of  things,  and  I  have  hardly  more  than  a  pictorial 
impression  of  the  Pope's  illness  and  of  the  discussion  of  the  Law 
of  the  Convents.  Indeed  I  am  afraid  to  speak  of  the  Pope's  illness 
at  all,  lest  I  should  say  something  egregiously  heartless  about  it, 
recalling  too  forcibly  that  unnatural  husband  who  was  heard  to 
wish  that  his  wife  would  "either"  get  well  -  — !  He  had  his 
reasons,  and  Roman  tourists  have  theirs  in  the  shape  of  a  vague 
longing  for  something  spectacular  at  St.  Peter's.  If  it  takes  the 
sacrifice  of  somebody  to  produce  it  let  somebody  then  be  sacrificed. 
Meanwhile  we  have  been  having  a  glimpse  of  the  spectacular  side 
of  the  Religious  Corporations  Bill.  Hearing  one  morning  a  great 
hubbub  in  the  Corso  I  stepped  forth  upon  my  balcony.  A  couple 
of  hundred  men  were  strolling  slowly  down  the  street  with  their 
hands  in  their  pockets,  shouting  in  unison  "  Abbasso  il  ministero ! " 
and  huzzaing  in  chorus.  Just  beneath  my  window  they  stopped 
and  began  to  murmur  "Al  Quirinale,  al  Quirinale!"  The  crowd 
surged  a  moment  gently  and  then  drifted  to  the  Quirinal,  where 
it  scuffled  harmlessly  with  half-a-dozen  of  the  king's  soldiers.  It 

[272  ] 


THE  AFTER-SEASON   IN   ROME 

ought  to  have  been  impressive,  for  what  was  it,  strictly,  unless  the 
seeds  of  revolution  ?  But  its  carriage  was  too  gentle  and  its  cries 
too  musical  to  send  the  most  timorous  tourist  to  packing  his  trunk. 
As  I  began  with  saying:  in  Rome,  in  May,  everything  has  an 
amiable  side,  even  popular  uprisings. 


FROM   A   ROMAN  NOTE-BOOK 


FROM  A  ROMAN  NOTE-BOOK 


jECEMBER  28,  1872.  —  In  Rome  again 
for  the  last  three  days  —  that  second  visit 
which,  when  the  first  is  n't  followed  by  a 
fatal  illness  in  Florence,  the  story  goes  that 
one  is  doomed  to  pay.  I  did  n't  drink 
of  the  Fountain  of  Trevi  on  the  eve  of 
departure  the  other  time;  but  I  feel  as  if 
I  had  drunk  of  the  Tiber  itself.  Neverthe 
less  as  I  drove  from  the  station  in  the  evening  I  wondered  what  I 
should  think  of  it  at  this  first  glimpse  had  n't  I  already  known  it. 
All  manner  of  evil  perhaps.  Paris,  as  I  passed  along  the  Boule 
vards  three  evenings  before  to  take  the  train,  was  swarming  and 
glittering  as  befits  a  great  capital.  Here,  in  the  black,  narrow, 
crooked,  empty  streets,  I  saw  nothing  I  would  fain  regard  as 
eternal.  But  there  were  new  gas-lamps  round  the  spouting  Triton 
in  Piazza  Barberini  and  a  newspaper  stall  on  the  corner  of  the 
Condotti  and  the  Corso  —  salient  signs  of  the  emancipated  state. 
An  hour  later  I  walked  up  to  Via  Gregoriana  by  Piazza  di  Spagna. 
It  was  all  silent  and  deserted,  and  the  great  flight  of  steps  looked 
surprisingly  small.  Everything  seemed  meagre,  dusky,  provincial. 
Could  Rome  after  all  really  6?  a  world-city  ?  That  queer  old  rococo 
garden  gateway  at  the  top  of  the  Gregoriana  stirred  a  dormant 

[277] 


ITALIAN   HOURS 

memory ;  it  awoke  into  a  consciousness  of  the  delicious  mildness 
of  the  air,  and  very  soon,  in  a  little  crimson  drawing-room,  I  was 
reconciled  and  re-initiated.  .  .  .  Everything  is  dear  (in  the  way 
of  lodgings),  but  it  hardly  matters,  as  everything  is  taken  and  some 
one  else  paying  for  it.  I  must  make  up  my  mind  to  a  bare  perch. 
But  it  seems  poorly  perverse  here  to  aspire  to  an  "interior"  or  to 
be  conscious  of  the  economic  side  of  life.  The  aesthetic  is  so  intense 
that  you  feel  you  should  live  on  the  taste  of  it,  should  extract  the 
nutritive  essence  of  the  atmosphere.  For  positively  it's  such  an 
atmosphere !  The  weather  is  perfect,  the  sky  as  blue  as  the  most 
exploded  tradition  fames  it,  the  whole  air  glowing  and  throbbing 
with  lovely  colour.  .  .  .  The  glitter  of  Paris  is  now  all  gaslight. 
And  oh  the  monotonous  miles  of  rain-washed  asphalte ! 

December  ^oth.  —  I  have  had  nothing  to  do  with  the  "cere 
monies."  In  fact  I  believe  there  have  hardly  been  any  —  no  mid 
night  mass  at  the  Sistine  chapel,  no  silver  trumpets  at  St.  Peter's. 
Everything  is  remorselessly  clipped  and  curtailed  —  the  Vatican 
in  deepest  mourning.  But  I  saw  it  in  its  superbest  scarlet  in  '69. 
...  I  went  yesterday  with  L.  to  the  Colonna  gardens  —  an 
adventure  that  would  have  reconverted  me  to  Rome  if  the  thing 
were  n't  already  done.  It's  a  rare  old  place  —  rising  in  mouldy 
bosky  terraces  and  mossy  stairways  and  winding  walks  from  the 
back  of  the  palace  to  the  top  of  the  Quirinal.  It's  the  grand 
style  of  gardening,  and  resembles  the  present  natural  manner  as 
a  chapter  of  Johnsonian  rhetoric  resembles  a  piece  of  clever  con 
temporary  journalism.  But  it's  a  better  style  in  horticulture  than 
in  literature ;  I  prefer  one  of  the  long-drawn  blue-green  Colonna 

[278] 


FROM  A   ROMAN   NOTE-BOOK 

vistas,  with  a  maimed  and  mossy-coated  garden  goddess  at  the 
end,  to  the  finest  possible  quotation  from  a  last-century  classic. 
Perhaps  the  best  thing  there  is  the  old  orangery  with  its  trees  in 
fantastic  terra-cotta  tubs.  The  late  afternoon  light  was  gilding 
the  monstrous  jars  and  suspending  golden  chequers  among  the 
golden-fruited  leaves.  Or  perhaps  the  best  thing  is  the  broad 
terrace  with  its  mossy  balustrade  and  its  benches;  also  its  view 
of  the  great  naked  Torre  di  Nerone  (I  think),  which  might  look 
stupid  if  the  rosy  brickwork  did  n't  take  such  a  colour  in  the 
blue  air.  Delightful,  at  any  rate,  to  stroll  and  talk  there  in  the 
afternoon  sunshine. 

January  2nd,  1873.  —  Two  or  three  drives  with  A.  —  one  to  St. 
Paul's  without  the  Walls  and  back  by  a  couple  of  old  churches 
on  the  Aventine.  I  was  freshly  struck  with  the  rare  distinction 
of  the  little  Protestant  cemetery  at  the  Gate,  lying  in  the  shadow 
of  the  black  sepulchral  Pyramid  and  the  thick-growing  black 
cypresses.  Bathed  in  the  clear  Roman  light  the  place  is  heart 
breaking  for  what  it  asks  you  —  in  such  a  world  as  this  —  to  re 
nounce.  If  it  should  "make  one  in  love  with  death  to  lie  there," 
that's  only  if  death  should  be  conscious.  As  the  case  stands,  the 
weight  of  a  tremendous  past  presses  upon  the  flowery  sod,  and  the 
sleeper's  mortality  feels  the  contact  of  all  the  mortality  with  which 
the  brilliant  air  is  tainted.  .  .  .  The  restored  Basilica  is  incredibly 
splendid.  It  seems  a  last  pompous  effort  of  formal  Catholicism, 
and  there  are  few  more  striking  emblems  of  later  Rome  —  the 
Rome  foredoomed  to  see  Victor  Emmanuel  in  the  Quirinal,  the 
Rome  of  abortive  councils  and  unheeded  anathemas.  It  rises 

[  279  ] 


ITALIAN  HOURS 

there,  gorgeous  and  useless,  on  its  miasmatic  site,  with  an  air 
of  conscious  bravado  —  a  florid  advertisement  of  the  superabun 
dance  of  faith.  Within  it 's  magnificent,  and  its  magnificence  has 
no  shabby  spots  —  a  rare  thing  in  Rome.  Marble  and  mosaic, 
alabaster  and  malachite,  lapis  and  porphyry,  incrust  it  from  pave 
ment  to  cornice  and  flash  back  their  polished  lights  at  each  other 
with  such  a  splendour  of  effect  that  you  seem  to  stand  at  the  heart 
of  some  immense  prismatic  crystal.  One  has  to  come  to  Italy 
to  know  marbles  and  love  them.  I  remember  the  fascination  of 
the  first  great  show  of  them  I  met  in  Venice  —  at  the  Scalzi  and 
Gesuiti.  Colour  has  in  no  other  form  so  cool  and  unfading  a 
purity  and  lustre.  Softness  of  tone  and  hardness  of  substance  — 
is  n't  that  the  sum  of  the  artist's  desire  ?  G.,  with  his  beautiful  ca 
ressing,  open-lipped  Roman  utterance,  so  easy  to  understand  and, 
to  my  ear,  so  finely  suggestive  of  genuine  Latin,  not  our  horrible 
Anglo-Saxon  and  Protestant  kind,  urged  upon  us  the  charms  of  a 
return  by  the  Aventine  and  the  sight  of  a  couple  of  old  churches. 
The  best  is  Santa  Sabina,  a  very  fine  old  structure  of  the  fifth 
century,  mouldering  in  its  dusky  solitude  and  consuming  its  own 
antiquity.  What  a  massive  heritage  Christianity  and  Catholicism 
are  leaving  here!  What  a  substantial  fact,  in  all  its  decay,  this 
memorial  Christian  temple  outliving  its  uses  among  the  sunny 
gardens  and  vineyards!  It  has  a  noble  nave,  filled  with  a  stale 
smell  which  (like  that  of  the  onion)  brought  tears  to  my  eyes,  and 
bordered  with  twenty-four  fluted  marble  columns  of  Pagan  origin. 
The  crudely  primitive  little  mosaics  along  the  entablature  are 
extremely  curious.  A  Dominican  monk,  still  young,  who  showed 

[280] 


FROM   A   ROMAN   NOTE-BOOK 

us  the  church,  seemed  a  creature  generated  from  its  musty  shadows 
and  odours.  His  physiognomy  was  wonderfully  de  I'emploi,  and 
his  voice,  most  agreeable,  had  the  strangest  jaded  humility.  His 
lugubrious  salute  and  sanctimonious  impersonal  appropriation  of 
my  departing  franc  would  have  been  a  master-touch  on  the  stage. 
While  we  were  still  in  the  church  a  bell  rang  that  he  had  to  go  and 
answer,  and  as  he  came  back  and  approached  us  along  the  nave 
he  made  with  his  white  gown  and  hood  and  his  cadaverous  face, 
against  the  dark  church  background,  one  of  those  pictures  which, 
thank  the  Muses,  have  not  yet  been  reformed  out  of  Italy.  It  was 
the  exact  illustration,  for  insertion  in  a  text,  of  heaven  knows  how 
many  old  romantic  and  conventional  literary  Italianisms  —  plays, 
poems,  mysteries  of  Udolpho.  We  got  back  into  the  carriage 
and  talked  of  profane  things  and  went  home  to  dinner  —  drifting 
recklessly,  it  seemed  to  me,  from  aesthetic  luxury  to  social. 

On  the  3  ist  we  went  to  the  musical  vesper-service  at  the  Gesu 
—  hitherto  done  so  splendidly  before  the  Pope  and  the  cardinals. 
The  manner  of  it  was  eloquent  of  change  —  no  Pope,  no  cardi 
nals,  and  indifferent  music ;  but  a  great  mise-en-scene  nevertheless. 
The  church  is  gorgeous ;  late  Renaissance,  of  great  proportions, 
and  full,  like  so  many  others,  but  in  a  pre-eminent  degree,  of  seven 
teenth  and  eighteenth  century  Romanism.  It  doesn't  impress 
the  imagination,  but  richly  feeds  the  curiosity,  by  which  I  mean 
one's  sense  of  the  curious ;  suggests  no  legends,  but  innumerable 
anecdotes  a  la  Stendhal.  There  is  a  vast  dome,  filled  with  a  florid 
concave  fresco  of  tumbling  foreshortened  angels,  and  all  over  the 
ceilings  and  cornices  a  wonderful  outlay  of  dusky  gildings  and 

[281  ] 


ITALIAN   HOURS 

mouldings.  There  are  various  Bernini  saints  and  seraphs  in 
stucco-sculpture,  astride  of  the  tablets  and  door-tops,  backing 
against  their  rusty  machinery  of  coppery  nimbi  and  egg-shaped 
cloudlets.  Marble,  damask  and  tapers  in  gorgeous  profusion. 
The  high  altar  a  great  screen  of  twinkling  chandeliers.  The  choir 
perched  in  a  little  loft  high  up  in  the  right  transept,  like  a  balcony 
in  a  side-scene  at  the  opera,  and  indulging  in  surprising  roulades 
and  flourishes.  .  .  .  Near  me  sat  a  handsome,  opulent-looking 
nun  —  possibly  an  abbess  or  prioress  of  noble  lineage.  Can  a 
holy  woman  of  such  a  complexion  listen  to  a  fine  operatic  bary 
tone  in  a  sumptuous  temple  and  receive  none  but  ascetic  impres 
sions  ?  What  a  cross-fire  of  influences  does  Catholicism  provide ! 
January  tfh.  —  A  drive  with  A.  out  of  Porta  San  Giovanni 
and  along  Via  Appia  Nuova.  More  and  more  beautiful  as  you 
get  well  away  from  the  walls  and  the  great  view  opens  out  before 
you  —  the  rolling  green-brown  dells  and  flats  of  the  Campagna, 
the  long,  disjointed  arcade  of  the  aqueducts,  the  deep-shadowed 
blue  of  the  Alban  Hills,  touched  into  pale  lights  by  their  scattered 
towns.  We  stopped  at  the  ruined  basilica  of  San  Stefano,  an 
affair  of  the  fifth  century,  rather  meaningless  without  a  learned 
companion.  But  the  perfect  little  sepulchral  chambers  of  the 
Pancratii,  disinterred  beneath  the  church,  tell  their  own  tale  — 
in  their  hardly  dimmed  frescoes,  their  beautiful  sculptured  coffin 
and  great  sepulchral  slab.  Better  still  the  tomb  of  the  Valerii 
adjoining  it  —  a  single  chamber  with  an  arched  roof,  covered  with 
stucco  mouldings  perfectly  intact,  exquisite  figures  and  arabesques 
as  sharp  and  delicate  as  if  the  plasterer's  scaffold  had  just  been 

[282  ] 


FROM   A   ROMAN   NOTE-BOOK 

taken  from  under  them.   Strange  enough  to  think  of  these  things 
—  so  many  of  them  as  there  are  —  surviving  their  immemorial 
eclipse  in  this  perfect  shape  and  coming  up  like  long-lost  divers 
from  the  sea  of  time. 

January  i6th.  —  A  delightful  walk  last  Sunday  with  F.  to 
Monte  Mario.  We  drove  to  Porta  Angelica,  the  little  gate  hidden 
behind  the  right  wing  of  Bernini's  colonnade,  and  strolled  thence 
up  the  winding  road  to  the  Villa  Mellini,  where  one  of  the  greasy 
peasants  huddled  under  the  wall  in  the  sun  admits  you  for  half 
a  franc  into  the  finest  old  ilex-walk  in  Italy.  It  is  all  vaulted 
grey-green  shade  with  blue  Campagna  stretches  in  the  interstices. 
The  day  was  perfect;  the  still  sunshine,  as  we  sat  at  the  twisted 
base  of  the  old  trees,  seemed  to  have  the  drowsy  hum  of  mid 
summer  —  with  that  charm  of  Italian  vegetation  that  comes  to 
us  as  its  confession  of  having  scenically  served,  to  weariness  at 
last,  for  some  pastoral  these  many  centuries  a  classic.  In  a  certain 
cheapness  and  thinness  of  substance  —  as  compared  with  the 
English  stoutness,  never  left  athirst  —  it  reminds  me  of  our  own, 
and  it  is  relatively  dry  enough  and  pale  enough  to  explain  the 
contempt  of  many  unimaginative  Britons.  But  it  has  an  idle  abun 
dance  and  wantonness,  a  romantic  shabbiness  and  dishevelment. 
At  the  Villa  Mellini  is  the  famous  lonely  pine  which  "tells"  so  in 
the  landscape  from  other  points,  bought  off  from  the  axe  by  (I 
believe)  Sir  George  Beaumont,  commemorated  in  a  like  connec 
tion  in  Wordsworth's  great  sonnet.  He  at  least  was  not  an  un 
imaginative  Briton.  As  you  stand  under  it,  its  far-away  shallow 
dome,  supported  on  a  single  column  almost  white  enough  to  be 

[283] 


ITALIAN   HOURS 

marble,  seems  to  dwell  in  the  dizziest  depths  of  the  blue.  Its  pale 
grey-blue  boughs  and  its  silvery  stem  make  a  wonderful  harmony 
with  the  ambient  air.  The  Villa  Mellini  is  full  of  the  elder  Italy 
of  one's  imagination  —  the  Italy  of  Boccaccio  and  Ariosto.  There 
are  twenty  places  where  the  Florentine  story-tellers  might  have 
sat  round  on  the  grass.  Outside  the  villa  walls,  beneath  the  over 
crowding  orange-boughs,  straggled  old  Italy  as  well  —  but  not 
in  Boccaccio's  velvet :  a  row  of  ragged  and  livid  contadini,  some 
simply  stupid  in  their  squalor,  but  some  downright  brigands  of 
romance,  or  of  reality,  with  matted  locks  and  terribly  sullen  eyes. 
A  couple  of  days  later  I  walked  for  old  acquaintance'  sake  over 
to  San  Onofrio  on  the  Janiculan.  The  approach  is  one  of  the 
dirtiest  adventures  in  Rome,  and  though  the  view  is  fine  from 
the  little  terrace,  the  church  and  convent  are  of  a  meagre  and 
musty  pattern.  Yet  here  —  almost  like  pearls  in  a  dunghill  — 
are  hidden  mementos  of  two  of  the  most  exquisite  of  Italian 
minds.  Torquato  Tasso  spent  the  last  months  of  his  life  here, 
and  you  may  visit  his  room  and  various  warped  and  faded  relics. 
The  most  interesting  is  a  cast  of  his  face  taken  after  death  — 
looking,  like  all  such  casts,  almost  more  than  mortally  gallant  and 
distinguished.  But  who  should  look  all  ideally  so  if  not  he  ?  In 
a  little  shabby,  chilly  corridor  adjoining  is  a  fresco  of  Leonardo, 
a  Virgin  and  Child  with  the  donatorio.  It  is  very  small,  simple 
and  faded,  but  it  has  all  the  artist's  magic,  that  mocking,  illusive 
refinement  and  hint  of  a  vague  arriere-pensee  which  mark  every 
stroke  of  Leonardo's  brush.  Is  it  the  perfection  of  irony  or  the 
perfection  of  tenderness  ?  What  does  he  mean,  what  does  he 

[284] 


FROM  A   ROMAN   NOTE-BOOK 

affirm,  what  does  he  deny  ?  Magic  would  n't  be  magic,  nor  the 
author  of  such  things  stand  so  absolutely  alone,  if  we  were  ready 
with  an  explanation.  As  I  glanced  from  the  picture  to  the 
poor  stupid  little  red-faced  brother  at  my  side  I  wondered  if  the 
thing  might  n't  pass  for  an  elegant  epigram  on  monasticism.  Cer 
tainly,  at  any  rate,  there  is  more  intellect  in  it  than  under  all  the 
monkish  tonsures  it  has  seen  coming  and  going  these  three  hun 
dred  years. 

January  2 1st.  —  The  last  three  or  four  days  I  have  regularly 
spent  a  couple  of  hours  from  noon  baking  myself  in  the  sun  of 
the  Pincio  to  get  rid  of  a  cold.  The  weather  perfect  and  the  crowd 
(especially  to-day)  amazing.  Such  a  staring,  lounging,  dandified, 
amiable  crowd !  Who  does  the  vulgar  stay-at-home  work  of  Rome  ? 
All  the  grandees  and  half  the  foreigners  are  there  in  their  car 
riages,  the  bourgeoisie  on  foot  staring  at  them  and  the  beggars 
lining  all  the  approaches.  The  great  difference  between  public 
places  in  America  and  Europe  is  in  the  number  of  unoccupied 
people  of  every  age  and  condition  sitting  about  early  and  late  on 
benches  and  gazing  at  you,  from  your  hat  to  your  boots,  as  you 
pass.  Europe  is  certainly  the  continent  of  the  practised  stare. 
The  ladies  on  the  Pincio  have  to  run  the  gauntlet ;  but  they  seem 
to  do  so  complacently  enough.  The  European  woman  is  brought 
up  to  the  sense  of  having  a  definite  part  in  the  way  of  manners  or 
manner  to  play  in  public.  To  lie  back  in  a  barouche  alone,  bal 
ancing  a  parasol  and  seeming  to  ignore  the  extremely  immediate 
gaze  of  two  serried  ranks  of  male  creatures  on  each  side  of  her 
path,  save  here  and  there  to  recognise  one  of  them  with  an  im- 

[285] 


ITALIAN   HOURS 

perceptible  nod,  is  one  of  her  daily  duties.  The  number  of  young 
men  here  who,  like  the  coenobites  of  old,  lead  the  purely  con 
templative  life  is  enormous.  They  muster  in  especial  force  on 
the  Pincio,  but  the  Corso  all  day  is  thronged  with  them.  They 
are  well-dressed,  good-humoured,  good-looking,  polite ;  but  they 
seem  never  to  do  a  harder  stroke  of  work  than  to  stroll  from  the 
Piazza.  Colonna  to  the  Hotel  de  Rome  or  vice  versa.  Some  of 
them  don't  even  stroll,  but  stand  leaning  by  the  hour  against  the 
doorways,  sucking  the  knobs  of  their  canes,  feeling  their  back 
hair  and  settling  their  shirt-cuffs.  At  my  cafe  in  the  morning  sev 
eral  stroll  in  already  (at  nine  o'clock)  in  light,  in  "evening" 
gloves.  But  they  order  nothing,  turn  on  their  heels,  glance  at  the 
mirrors  and  stroll  out  again.  When  it  rains  they  herd  under  the 
portes-cocheres  and  in  the  smaller  cafes.  .  .  .  Yesterday  Prince 
Humbert's  little  primogenito  was  on  the  Pincio  in  an  open  landau 
with  his  governess.  He's  a  sturdy  blond  little  man  and  the  image 
of  the  King.  They  had  stopped  to  listen  to  the  music,  and  the 
crowd  was  planted  about  the  carriage-wheels,  staring  and  criticis 
ing  under  the  child's  snub  little  nose.  It  appeared  bold  cynical 
curiosity,  without  the  slightest  manifestation  of  "loyalty,"  and 
it  gave  me  a  singular  sense  of  the  vulgarisation  of  Rome  under 
the  new  regime.  When  the  Pope  drove  abroad  it  was  a  solemn 
spectacle;  even  if  you  neither  kneeled  nor  uncovered  you  were 
irresistibly  impressed.  But  the  Pope  never  stopped  to  listen  to 
opera  tunes,  and  he  had  no  little  popelings,  under  the  charge  of 
superior  nurse-maids,  whom  you  might  take  liberties  with.  The 
family  at  the  Quirinal  make  something  of  a  merit,  I  believe,  of 


FROM  A   ROMAN  NOTE-BOOK 

their  modest  and  inexpensive  way  of  life.  The  merit  is  great; 
yet,  representationally,  what  a  change  for  the  worse  from  an  order 
which  proclaimed  stateliness  a  part  of  its  essence !  The  divinity 
that  doth  hedge  a  king  must  be  pretty  well  on  the  wane.  But 
how  many  more  fine  old  traditions  will  the  extremely  sentimental 
traveller  miss  in  the  Italians  over  whom  that  little  jostled  prince 
in  the  landau  will  have  come  into  his  kinghood  ?  .  .  .  The  Pincio 
continues  to  beguile;  it's  a  great  resource.  I  am  for  ever  being 
reminded  of  the  "aesthetic  luxury,"  as  I  called  it  above,  of  living 
in  Rome.  To  be  able  to  choose  of  an  afternoon  for  a  lounge 
(respectfully  speaking)  between  St.  Peter's  and  the  high  precinct 
you  approach  by  the  gate  just  beyond  Villa  Medici  —  counting 
nothing  else  —  is  a  proof  that  if  in  Rome  you  may  suffer  from 
ennui,  at  least  your  ennui  has  a  throbbing  soul  in  it.  It  is  some 
thing  to  say  for  the  Pincio  that  you  don't  always  choose  St.  Peter's. 
Sometimes  I  lose  patience  with  its  parade  of  eternal  idleness, 
but  at  others  this  very  idleness  is  balm  to  one's  conscience.  Life 
on  just  these  terms  seems  so  easy,  so  monotonously  sweet,  that 
you  feel  it  would  be  unwise,  would  be  really  unsafe,  to  change. 
The  Roman  air  is  charged  with  an  elixir,  the  Roman  cup  sea 
soned  with  some  insidious  drop,  of  which  the  action  is  fatally,  yet 
none  the  less  agreeably,  "lowering." 

January  26th.  —  With  S.  to  the  Villa  Medici  —  perhaps  on 
the  whole  the  most  enchanting  place  in  Rome.  The  part  of  the 
garden  called  the  Boschetto  has  an  incredible,  impossible  charm ; 
an  upper  terrace,  behind  locked  gates,  covered  with  a  little  dusky 
forest  of  evergreen  oaks.  Such  a  dim  light  as  of  a  fabled,  haunted 

[287] 


ITALIAN   HOURS 

place,  such  a  soft  suffusion  of  tender  grey-green  tones,  such  a  com 
pany  of  gnarled  and  twisted  little  miniature  trunks  —  dwarfs 
playing  with  each  other  at  being  giants  —  and  such  a  shower  of 
golden  sparkles  drifting  in  from  the  vivid  west !  At  the  end  of  the 
wood  is  a  steep,  circular  mound,  up  which  the  short  trees  scramble 
amain,  with  a  long  mossy  staircase  climbing  up  to  a  belvedere. 
This  staircase,  rising  suddenly  out  of  the  leafy  dusk  to  you  don't 
see  where,  is  delightfully  fantastic.  You  expect  to  see  an  old  wo 
man  in  a  crimson  petticoat  and  with  a  distaff  come  hobbling  down 
and  turn  into  a  fairy  and  offer  you  three  wishes.  I  should  name 
for  my  own  first  wish  that  one  did  n't  have  to  be  a  Frenchman  to 
come  and  live  and  dream  and  work  at  the  Academic  de  France. 
Can  there  be  for  a  while  a  happier  destiny  than  that  of  a  young 
artist  conscious  of  talent  and  of  no  errand  but  to  educate,  polish 
and  perfect  it,  transplanted  to  these  sacred  shades  ?  One  has 
fancied  Plato's  Academy  —  his  gleaming  colonnades,  his  bloom 
ing  gardens  and  Athenian  sky;  but  was  it  as  good  as  this  one, 
where  Monsieur  Hebert  does  the  Platonic  ?  The  blessing  in  Rome 
is  not  that  this  or  that  or  the  other  isolated  object  is  so  very  unsur 
passable;  but  that  the  general  air  so  contributes  to  interest,  to 
impressions  that  are  not  as  any  other  impressions  anywhere  in  the 
world.  And  from  this  general  air  the  Villa  Medici  has  distilled  an 
essence  of  its  own  —  walled  it  in  and  made  it  delightfully  private. 
The  great  facade  on  the  gardens  is  like  an  enormous  rococo 
clock-face  all  incrusted  with  images  and  arabesques  and  tablets. 
What  mornings  and  afternoons  one  might  spend  there,  brush  in 
hand,  unpreoccupied,  untormented,  pensioned,  satisfied  —  either 

[288] 


FROM   A   ROMAN   NOTE-BOOK 

persuading  one's  self  that  one  would  be  "doing  something"  in 
consequence  or  not  caring  if  one  should  n't  be. 

At  a  later  date  —  middle  of  March.  —  A  ride  with  S.  W.  out  of 
the  Porta  Pia  to  the  meadows  beyond  the  Ponte  Nomentana  — 
close  to  the  site  of  Phaon's  villa  where  Nero  in  hiding  had  him 
self  stabbed.  It  all  spoke  as  things  here  only  speak,  touching 
more  chords  than  one  can  now  really  know  or  say.  For  these  are 
predestined  memories  and  the  stuff  that  regrets  are  made  of; 
the  mild  divine  efflorescence  of  spring,  the  wonderful  landscape, 
the  talk  suspended  for  another  gallop.  .  .  .  Returning,  we  dis 
mounted  at  the  gate  of  the  Villa  Medici  and  walked  through  the 
twilight  of  the  vaguely  perfumed,  bird-haunted  alleys  to  H.'s 
studio,  hidden  in  the  wood  like  a  cottage  in  a  fairy  tale.  I  spent 
there  a  charming  half-hour  in  the  fading  light,  looking  at  the 
pictures  while  my  companion  discoursed  of  her  errand.  The 
studio  is  small  and  more  like  a  little  salon;  the  painting  refined, 
imaginative,  somewhat  morbid,  full  of  consummate  French  ability. 
A  portrait,  idealised  and  etherealised,  but  a  likeness  of  Mme. 
de  —  -  (from  last  year's  Salon)  in  white  satin,  quantities  of 
lace,  a  coronet,  diamonds  and  pearls ;  a  striking  combination  of 
brilliant  silvery  tones.  A  "Femme  Sauvage,"  a  naked  dusky  girl 
in  a  wood,  with  a  wonderfully  clever  pair  of  shy,  passionate  eyes. 
The  author  is  different  enough  from  any  of  the  numerous  Ameri 
can  artists.  They  may  be  producers,  but  he's  a  product  as  well 
—  a  product  of  influences  of  a  sort  of  which  we  have  as  yet 
no  general  command.  One  of  them  is  his  charmed  lapse  of  life 
in  that  unprofessional-looking  little  studio,  with  his  enchanted 

•  t  289  ] 


ITALIAN  HOURS 

wood  on  one  side  and  the  plunging  wall  of  Rome  on  the 
other. 

January  3Oth.  —  A  drive  the  other  day  with  a  friend  to  Villa 
Madama,  on  the  side  of  Monte  Mario ;  a  place  like  a  page  out 
of  one  of  Browning's  richest  evocations  of  this  clime  and  civilisa 
tion.  Wondrous  in  its  haunting  melancholy,  it  might  have  in 
spired  half  "The  Ring  and  the  Book"  at  a  stroke.  What  a  grim 
commentary  on  history  such  a  scene  —  what  an  irony  of  the  past ! 
The  road  up  to  it  through  the  outer  enclosure  is  almost  impassable 
with  mud  and  stones.  At  the  end,  on  a  terrace,  rises  the  once 
elegant  Casino,  with  hardly  a  whole  pane  of  glass  in  its  facade, 
reduced  to  its  sallow  stucco  and  degraded  ornaments.  The  front 
away  from  Rome  has  in  the  basement  a  great  loggia,  now  walled 
in  from  the  weather,  preceded  by  a  grassy  belittered  platform  with 
an  immense  sweeping  view  of  the  Campagna ;  the  sad-looking, 
more  than  sad-looking,  evil-looking,  Tiber  beneath  (the  colour  of 
gold,  the  sentimentalists  say,  the  colour  of  mustard,  the  realists) ; 
a  great  vague  stretch  beyond,  of  various  complexions  and  uses ; 
and  on  the  horizon  the  ever-iridescent  mountains.  The  place  has 
become  the  shabbiest  farm-house,  with  muddy  water  in  the  old 
pieces  d'eau  and  dunghills  on  the  old  parterres.  The  "feature" 
is  the  contents  of  the  loggia :  a  vaulted  roof  and  walls  decorated 
by  Giulio  Romano ;  exquisite  stucco-work  and  still  brilliant  fres 
coes;  arabesques  and  figurini,  nymphs  and  fauns,  animals  and 
flowers  —  gracefully  lavish  designs  of  every  sort.  Much  of  the 
colour  —  especially  the  blues  —  still  almost  vivid,  and  all  the 
work  wonderfully  ingenious,  elegant  and  charming.  Apartments 

[  290  ] 


FROM   A   ROMAN   NOTE-BOOK 

so  decorated  can  have  been  meant  only  for  the  recreation  of 
people  greater  than  any  we  know,  people  for  whom  life  was 
impudent  ease  and  success.  Margaret  Farnese  was  the  lady  of 
the  house,  but  where  she  trailed  her  cloth  of  gold  the  chickens 
now  scamper  between  your  legs  over  rotten  straw.  It  is  all  inex 
pressibly  dreary.  A  stupid  peasant  scratching  his  head,  a  couple 
of  critical  Americans  picking  their  steps,  the  walls  tattered  and 
befouled  breast-high,  dampness  and  decay  striking  in  on  your 
heart,  and  the  scene  overbowed  by  these  heavenly  frescoes,  moul 
dering  there  in  their  airy  artistry !  It 's  poignant ;  it  provokes  tears ; 
it  tells  so  of  the  waste  of  effort.  Something  human  seems  to  pant 
beneath  the  grey  pall  of  time  and  to  implore  you  to  rescue  it,  to 
pity  it,  to  stand  by  it  somehow.  But  you  leave  it  to  its  lingering 
death  without  compunction,  almost  with  pleasure ;  for  the  place 
seems  vaguely  crime-haunted  —  paying  at  least  the  penalty  of 
some  hard  immorality.  The  end  of  a  Renaissance  pleasure-house. 
Endless  for  the  didactic  observer  the  moral,  abysmal  for  the  story- 
seeker  the  tale. 

February  12th. — Yesterday  to  the  Villa  Albani.  Over-formal 
and  (as  my  companion  says)  too  much  like  a  tea-garden;  but 
with  beautiful  stairs  and  splendid  geometrical  lines  of  immense 
box-hedge,  intersected  with  high  pedestals  supporting  little  an 
tique  busts.  The  light  to-day  magnificent ;  the  Alban  Hills  of  an 
intenser  broken  purple  than  I  had  yet  seen  them  —  their  white 
towns  blooming  upon  it  like  vague  projected  lights.  It  was  like  a 
piece  of  very  modern  painting,  and  a  good  example  of  how  Nature 
has  at  times  a  sort  of  mannerism  which  ought  to  make  us  careful 

'  1 291  ] 


ITALIAN  HOURS 

how  we  condemn  out  of  hand  the  more  refined  and  affected 
artists.  The  collection  of  marbles  in  the  Casino  (Winckelmann's) 
admirable  and  to  be  seen  again.  The  famous  Antinous  crowned 
with  lotus  a  strangely  beautiful  and  impressive  thing.  The 
"Greek  manner,"  on  the  showing  of  something  now  and  again 
encountered  here,  moves  one  to  feel  that  even  for  purely  romantic 
and  imaginative  effects  it  surpasses  any  since  invented.  If  there 
be  not  imagination,  even  in  our  comparatively  modern  sense  of 
the  word,  in  the  baleful  beauty  of  that  perfect  young  profile  there 
is  none  in  "Hamlet"  or  in  "Lycidas."  There  is  five  hundred 
times  as  much  as  in  "The  Transfiguration."  With  this  at  any 
rate  to  point  to  it's  not  for  sculpture  not  professedly  to  pro 
duce  any  emotion  producible  by  painting.  There  are  numbers  of 
small  and  delicate  fragments  of  bas-reliefs  of  exquisite  grace,  and 
a  huge  piece  (two  combatants  —  one,  on  horseback,  beating  down 
another  —  murder  made  eternal  and  beautiful)  attributed  to  the 
Parthenon  and  certainly  as  grandly  impressive  as  anything  in  the 
Elgin  marbles.  S.  W.  suggested  again  the  Roman  villas  as  a  "sub 
ject."  Excellent  if  one  could  find  a  feast  of  facts  a  la  Stendhal.  A 
lot  of  vague  ecstatic  descriptions  and  anecdotes  would  n't  at  all 
pay.  There  have  been  too  many  already.  Enough  facts  are  re 
corded,  I  suppose ;  one  should  discover  them  and  soak  in  them  for 
a  twelvemonth.  And  yet  a  Roman  villa,  in  spite  of  statues,  ideas 
and  atmosphere,  affects  me  as  of  a  scanter  human  and  social 
portee,  a  shorter,  thinner  reverberation,  than  an  old  English 
country-house,  round  which  experience  seems  piled  so  thick. 
But  this  perhaps  is  either  hair-splitting  or  "racial"  prejudice. 

[292] 


EN  TKAN'l  1-,     'I'D      Mil:     VATICAN,     KoMK. 


FROM   A   ROMAN   NOTE-BOOK 

March  gth.  —  The  Vatican  is  still  deadly  cold;  a  couple  of 
hours  there  yesterday  with  R.  W.  E.  Yet  he,  illustrious  and 
enviable  man,  fresh  from  the  East,  had  no  overcoat  and  wanted 
none.  Perfect  bliss,  I  think,  would  be  to  live  in  Rome  without 
thinking  of  overcoats.  The  Vatican  seems  very  familiar,  but 
strangely  smaller  than  of  old.  I  never  lost  the  sense  before  of  con 
fusing  vastness.  Sancta  simplicitas  !  All  my  old  friends  however 
stand  there  in  undimmed  radiance,  keeping  most  of  them  their 
old  pledges.  I  am  perhaps  more  struck  now  with  the  enormous 
amount  of  padding  —  the  number  of  third-rate,  fourth-rate  things 
that  weary  the  eye  desirous  to  approach  freshly  the  twenty  and 
thirty  best.  In  spite  of  the  padding  there  are  dozens  of  treasures 
that  one  passes  regretfully ;  but  the  impression  of  the  whole  place 
is  the  great  thing  —  the  feeling  that  through  these  solemn  vistas 
flows  the  source  of  an  incalculable  part  of  our  present  conception 
of  Beauty. 

April  loth.  —  Last  night,  in  the  rain,  to  the  Teatro  Valle  to 
see  a  comedy  of  Goldoni  in  Venetian  dialect  —  "I  Quattro  Rus- 
tighi."  I  could  but  half  follow  it ;  enough,  however,  to  be  sure  that, 
for  all  its  humanity  of  irony,  it  was  n't  so  good  as  Moliere.  The 
acting  was  capital  —  broad,  free  and  natural ;  the  play  of  talk 
easier  even  than  life  itself;  but,  like  all  the  Italian  acting  I  have 
seen,  it  was  wanting  in  finesse,  that  shade  of  the  shade  by  which, 
and  by  which  alone,  one  really  knows  art.  I  contrasted  the  affair 
with  the  evening  in  December  last  that  I  walked  over  (also  in  the 
rain)  to  the  Odeon  and  saw  the  "Plaideurs"  and  the  "Malade 
Imaginaire."  There,  too,  was  hardly  more  than  a  handful  of 

[293] 


ITALIAN   HOURS 

spectators ;  but  what  rich,  ripe,  fully  representational  and  above 
all  intellectual  comedy,  and  what  polished,  educated  playing! 
These  Venetians  in  particular,  however,  have  a  marvellous  entrain 
of  their  own;  they  seem  even  less  than  the  French  to  recite.  In 
some  of  the  women  —  ugly,  with  red  hands  and  shabby  dresses 

—  an  extraordinary  gift  of  natural  utterance,  of  seeming  to  invent 
joyously  as  they  go. 

Later. —  Last  evening  in  H.'s  box  at  the  Apollo  to  hear  Ernesto 
Rossi  in  "Othello."  He  shares  supremacy  with  Salvini  in  Italian 
tragedy.  Beautiful  great  theatre  with  boxes  you  can  walk  about 
in;  brilliant  audience.  The  Princess  Margaret  was  there  —  I 
have  never  been  to  the  theatre  that  she  was  not  —  and  a  number 
of  other  princesses  in  neighbouring  boxes.  G.  G.  came  in  and 
instructed  us  that  they  were  the  M.,  the  L.,  the  P.,  &c.  Rossi  is 
both  very  bad  and  very  fine ;  bad  where  anything  like  taste  and 
discretion  is  required,  but  "all  there,"  and  more  than  there,  in 
violent  passion.  The  last  act  reduced  too  much,  however,  to  mere 
exhibitional  sensibility.  The  interesting  thing  to  me  was  to  ob 
serve  the  Italian  conception  of  the  part  —  to  see  how  crude  it  was, 
how  little  it  expressed  the  hero's  moral  side,  his  depth,  his  dignity 

—  anything  more  than  his  being  a  creature  terrible  in  mere  tan 
trums.  The  great  point  was  his  seizing  lago's  head  and  whacking 
it  half-a-dozen  times  on  the  floor,  and  then  flinging  him  twenty 
yards  away.  It  was  wonderfully  done,  but  in  the  doing  of  it  and 
in  the  evident  relish  for  it  in  the  house  there  was  I  scarce  knew 
what  force  of  easy  and  thereby  rather  cheap  expression. 

April  2Jth.  —  A  morning  with  L.  B.  at  Villa  Ludovisi,  which 

[294] 


FROM   A   ROMAN  NOTE-BOOK 

we  agreed  that  we  should  n't  soon  forget.  The  villa  now  belongs 
to  the  King,  who  has  lodged  his  morganatic  wife  there.  There  is 
nothing  so  blissfully  right  in  Rome,  nothing  more  consummately 
consecrated  to  style.  The  grounds  and  gardens  are  immense,  and 
the  great  rusty-red  city  wall  stretches  away  behind  them  and 
makes  the  burden  of  the  seven  hills  seem  vast  without  making 
them  seem  small.  There  is  everything  —  dusky  avenues  trimmed 
by  the  clippings  of  centuries,  groves  and  dells  and  glades  and 
glowing  pastures  and  reedy  fountains  and  great  flowering  mead 
ows  studded  with  enormous  slanting  pines.  The  day  was  deli 
cious,  the  trees  all  one  melody,  the  whole  place  a  revelation  of 
what  Italy  and  hereditary  pomp  can  do  together.  Nothing  could 
be  more  in  the  grand  manner  than  this  garden  view  of  the  city 
ramparts,  lifting  their  fantastic  battlements  above  the  trees  and 
flowers.  They  are  all  tapestried  with  vines  and  made  to  serve  as 
sunny  fruit-walls  —  grim  old  defence  as  they  once  were;  now 
giving  nothing  but  a  splendid  buttressed  privacy.  The  sculptures 
in  the  little  Casino  are  few,  but  there  are  two  great  ones  —  the 
beautiful  sitting  Mars  and  the  head  of  the  great  Juno,  the  latter 
thrust  into  a  corner  behind  a  shutter.  These  things  it 's  almost 
impossible  to  praise ;  we  can  only  mark  them  well  and  keep  them 
clear,  as  we  insist  on  silence  to  hear  great  music.  ...  If  I  don't 
praise  Guercino's  Aurora  in  the  greater  Casino,  it's  for  another 
reason ;  this  is  certainly  a  very  muddy  masterpiece.  It  figures  on 
the  ceiling  of  a  small  low  hall ;  the  painting  is  coarse  and  the  ceil 
ing  too  near.  Besides,  it 's  unfair  to  pass  straight  from  the  Greek 
mythology  to  the  Bolognese.  We  were  left  to  roam  at  will  through 


ITALIAN   HOURS 

the  house ;  the  custode  shut  us  in  and  went  to  walk  in  the  park. 
The  apartments  were  all  open,  and  I  had  an  opportunity  to  re 
construct,  from  its  milieu  at  least,  the  character  of  a  morganatic 
queen.  I  saw  nothing  to  indicate  that  it  was  not  amiable;  but 
I  should  have  thought  more  highly  of  the  lady's  discrimination 
if  she  had  had  the  Juno  removed  from  behind  her  shutter.  In 
such  a  house,  girdled  about  with  such  a  park,  methinks  I  could 
be  amiable  —  and  perhaps  discriminating  too.  The  Ludovisi 
Casino  is  small,  but  the  perfection  of  the  life  of  ease  might  surely 
be  led  there.  There  are  English  houses  enough  in  wondrous  parks, 
but  they  expose  you  to  too  many  small  needs  and  observances  — 
to  say  nothing  of  a  red-faced  butler  dropping  his  h's.  You  are 
oppressed  with  the  detail  of  accommodation.  Here  the  billiard- 
table  is  old-fashioned,  perhaps  a  trifle  crooked;  but  you  have 
Guercino  above  your  head,  and  Guercino,  after  all,  is  almost  as 
good  as  Guido.  The  rooms,  I  noticed,  all  pleased  by  their  shape, 
by  a  lovely  proportion,  by  a  mass  of  delicate  ornamentation  on 
the  high  concave  ceilings.  One  might  live  over  again  in  them  some 
deliciously  benighted  life  of  a  forgotten  type  —  with  graceful  old 
sale,  and  immensely  thick  walls,  and  a  winding  stone  staircase, 
and  a  view  from  the  loggia  at  the  top ;  a  view  of  twisted  parasol- 
pines  balanced,  high  above  a  wooden  horizon,  against  a  sky  of 
faded  sapphire. 

May  ijth.  —  It  was  wonderful  yesterday  at  St.  John  Lateran. 
The  spring  now  has  turned  to  perfect  summer ;  there  are  cascades 
of  verdure  over  all  the  walls ;  the  early  flowers  are  a  fading  mem 
ory,  and  the  new  grass  knee-deep  in  the  Villa  Borghese.  The 

[296  ] 


FROM   A   ROMAN   NOTE-BOOK 

winter  aspect  of  the  region  about  the  Lateran  is  one  of  the  best 
things  in  Rome ;  the  sunshine  is  nowhere  so  golden  and  the  lean 
shadows  nowhere  so  purple  as  on  the  long  grassy  walk  to  Santa 
Croce.  But  yesterday  I  seemed  to  see  nothing  but  green  and  blue. 
The  expanse  before  Santa  Croce  was  vivid  green ;  the  Campagna 
rolled  away  in  great  green  billows,  which  seemed  to  break  high 
about  the  gaunt  aqueducts;  and  the  Alban  Hills,  which  in  Jan 
uary  and  February  keep  shifting  and  melting  along  the  whole 
scale  of  azure,  were  almost  monotonously  fresh,  and  had  lost  some 
of  their  finer  modelling.  But  the  sky  was  ultramarine  and  every 
thing  radiant  with  light  and  warmth — warmth  which  a  soft  steady 
breeze  kept  from  excess.  I  strolled  some  time  about  the  church, 
which  has  a  grand  air  enough,  though  I  don't  seize  the  point  of 

view  of  Miss ,  who  told  me  the  other  day  how  vastly  finer  she 

thought  it  than  St.  Peter's.  But  on  Miss  —  — 's  lips  this  seemed 
a  very  pretty  paradox.  The  choir  and  transepts  have  a  sombre 
splendour,  and  I  like  the  old  vaulted  passage  with  its  slabs  and 
monuments  behind  the  choir.  The  charm  of  charms  at  St.  John 
Lateran  is  the  admirable  twelfth-century  cloister,  which  was  never 
more  charming  than  yesterday.  The  shrubs  and  flowers  about 
the  ancient  well  were  blooming  away  in  the  intense  light,  and  the 
twisted  pillars  and  chiselled  capitals  of  the  perfect  little  colonnade 
seemed  to  enclose  them  like  the  sculptured  rim  of  a  precious  vase. 
Standing  out  among  the  flowers  you  may  look  up  and  see  a  section 
of  the  summit  of  the  great  facade  of  the  church.  The  robed  and 
mitred  apostles,  bleached  and  rain-washed  by  the  ages,  rose  into 
the  blue  air  like  huge  snow  figures.  I  spent  at  the  incorporated 

[297] 


ITALIAN   HOURS 

museum  a  subsequent  hour  of  fond  vague  attention,  having  it 
quite  to  myself.  It  is  rather  scantily  stocked,  but  the  great  cool 
halls  open  out  impressively  one  after  the  other,  and  the  wide 
spaces  between  the  statues  seem  to  suggest  at  first  that  each  is  a 
masterpiece.  I  was  in  the  loving  mood  of  one's  last  days  in  Rome, 
and  when  I  had  nothing  else  to  admire  I  admired  the  magnificent 
thickness  of  the  embrasures  of  the  doors  and  windows.  If  there 
were  no  objects  of  interest  at  all  in  the  Lateran  the  palace  would 
be  worth  walking  through  every  now  and  then,  to  keep  up  one's 
idea  of  solid  architecture.  I  went  over  to  the  Scala  Santa,  where 
was  no  one  but  a  very  shabby  priest  sitting  like  a  ticket-taker  at 
the  door.  But  he  let  me  pass,  and  I  ascended  one  of  the  profane 
lateral  stairways  and  treated  myself  to  a  glimpse  of  the  Sanctum 
Sanctorum.  Its  threshold  is  crossed  but  once  or  twice  a  year,  I 
believe,  by  three  or  four  of  the  most  exalted  divines,  but  you  may 
look  into  it  freely  enough  through  a  couple  of  gilded  lattices.  It  is 
very  sombre  and  splendid,  and  conveys  the  impression  of  a  very 
holy  place.  And  yet  somehow  it  suggested  irreverent  thoughts; 
it  had  to  my  fancy  —  perhaps  on  account  of  the  lattice  —  an 
Oriental,  a  Mahometan  note.  I  expected  every  moment  to  see 
a  sultana  appear  in  a  silver  veil  and  silken  trousers  and  sit  down 
on  the  crimson  carpet. 

Farewell,  packing,  the  sharp  pang  of  going.  One  would  like  to 
be  able  after  five  months  in  Rome  to  sum  up  for  tribute  and 
homage,  one's  experience,  one's  gains,  the  whole  adventure  of 
one's  sensibility.  But  one  has  really  vibrated  too  much  —  the 
addition  of  so  many  items  is  n't  easy.  What  is  simply  clear  is  the 

[298] 


FROM  A  ROMAN  NOTE-BOOK 

sense  of  an  acquired  passion  for  the  place  and  of  an  incalculable 
number  of  gathered  impressions.  Many  of  these  have  been  in 
tense  and  momentous,  but  one  has  trodden  on  the  other  —  there 
are  always  the  big  fish  that  swallow  up  the  little  —  and  one  can 
hardly  say  what  has  become  of  them.  They  store  themselves 
noiselessly  away,  I  suppose,  in  the  dim  but  safe  places  of  mem 
ory  and  "taste,"  and  we  live  in  a  quiet  faith  that  they  will  emerge 
into  vivid  relief  if  life  or  art  should  demand  them.  As  for  the 
passion  we  need  n't  perhaps  trouble  ourselves  about  that.  Fifty 
swallowed  palmfuls  of  the  Fountain  of  Trevi  could  n't  make  us 
more  ardently  sure  that  we  shall  at  any  cost  come  back. 

1873- 


A  FEW   OTHER  ROMAN 
NEIGHBOURHOODS 


A  FEW  OTHER  ROMAN 
NEIGHBOURHOODS 

|F  I  find  my  old  notes,  in  all  these  Roman 
connections,  inevitably  bristle  with  the 
spirit  of  the  postscript,  so  I  give  way  to 
this  prompting  to  the  extent  of  my  scant 
space  and  with  the  sense  of  other  occa 
sions  awaiting  me  on  which  I  shall  have  to 
do  no  less.  The  impression  of  Rome  was 
repeatedly  to  renew  itself  for  the  author  of 
these  now  rather  antique  and  artless  accents;  was  to  overlay  itself 
again  and  again  with  almost  heavy  thicknesses  of  experience, 
the  last  of  which  is,  as  I  write,  quite  fresh  to  memory;  and  he  has 
thus  felt  almost  ashamed  to  drop  his  subject  (though  it  be  one 
that  tends  so  easily  to  turn  to  the  infinite)  as  if  the  law  of  change 
had  in  all  the  years  had  nothing  to  say  to  his  case.  It's  of  course 
but  of  his  case  alone  that  he  speaks  —  wondering  little  what  he 
may  make  of  it  for  the  profit  of  others  by  an  attempt,  however 
brief,  to  point  the  moral  of  the  matter,  or  in  other  words  compare 
the  musing  mature  visitor's  "feeling  about  Rome  "with  that  of 
the  extremely  agitated,  even  if  though  extremely  inexpert,  con 
sciousness  reflected  in  the  previous  pages.  The  actual,  the  current 
Rome  affects  him  as  a  world  governed  by  new  conditions  alto- 

[  303  ] 


ITALIAN   HOURS 

gether  and  ruefully  pleading  that  sorry  fact  in  the  ear  of  the 
antique  wanderer  wherever  he  may  yet  mournfully  turn  for  some 
re-capture  of  what  he  misses.  The  city  of  his  first  unpremeditated 
rapture  shines  to  memory,  on  the  other  hand,  in  the  manner  of 
a  lost  paradise  the  rustle  of  whose  gardens  is  still  just  audible 
enough  in  the  air  to  make  him  wonder  if  some  sudden  turn,  some 
recovered  vista,  may  n't  lead  him  back  to  the  thing  itself.  My 
genial,  my  helpful  tag,  at  this  point,  would  doubtless  properly 
resolve  itself,  for  the  reader,  into  a  clue  toward  some  such  success 
ful  ingenuity  of  quest ;  a  remark  I  make,  I  may  add,  even  while 
reflecting  that  the  Paradise  is  n't  apparently  at  all  "lost"  to  visit 
ors  not  of  my  generation.  It  is  the  seekers  of  that  remote  and 
romantic  tradition  who  have  seen  it,  from  one  period  of  ten,  or 
even  of  five,  years  to  another,  systematically  and  remorselessly 
built  out  from  their  view.  Their  helpless  plaint,  their  sense  of  the 
generally  irrecoverable  and  unspeakable,  is  not,  however,  what  I 
desire  here  most  to  express ;  I  should  like,  on  the  contrary,  with 
ampler  opportunity,  positively  to  enumerate  the  cases,  the  cases  of 
contact,  impression,  experience,  in  which  the  cold  ashes  of  a  long- 
chilled  passion  may  fairly  feel  themselves  made  to  glow  again. 
No  one  who  has  ever  loved  Rome  as  Rome  could  be  loved  in 
youth  and  before  her  poised  basketful  of  the  finer  appeals  to  fond 
fancy  was  actually  upset,  wants  to  stop  loving  her;  so  that  our 
bleeding  and  wounded,  though  perhaps  not  wholly  moribund, 
loyalty  attends  us  as  a  hovering  admonitory,  anticipatory  ghost, 
one  of  those  magnanimous  life-companions  who  before  complete 
extinction  designate  to  the  other  member  of  the  union  their  ap- 

[304] 


OTHER   ROMAN   NEIGHBOURHOODS 

proved  successor.  So  it  is  at  any  rate  that  I  conceive  the  pilgrim 
old  enough  to  have  become  aware  in  all  these  later  years  of  what 
he  misses  to  be  counselled  and  pacified  in  the  interest  of  recog 
nitions  that  shall  a  little  make  up  for  it. 

It  was  this  wisdom  I  was  putting  into  practice,  no  doubt,  for 
instance,  when  I  lately  resigned  myself  to  motoring  of  a  splen 
did  June  day  "out  to"  Subiaco;  as  a  substitute  for  a  resignation 
that  had  anciently  taken,  alas,  but  the  form  of  my  never  getting 
there  at  all.  Everything  that  day,  moreover,  seemed  right,  surely; 
everything  on  certain  other  days  that  were  like  it  through  their 
large  indebtedness,  at  this,  that  and  the  other  point,  to  the  last 
new  thing,  seemed  so  right  that  they  come  back  to  me  now,  after 
a  moderate  interval,  in  the  full  light  of  that  unchallenged  felicity. 
I  could  n't  at  all  gloriously  recall,  for  instance,  as  I  floated  to 
Subiaco  on  vast  brave  wings,  how  on  the  occasion  of  my  first  visit 
to  Rome,  thirty-eight  years  before,  I  had  devoted  certain  evenings, 
evenings  of  artless  "preparation"  in  my  room  at  the  inn,  to  the 
perusal  of  Alphonse  Dantier's  admirable  Monasteres  Benedictins 
d'ltalie,  taking  piously  for  granted  that  I  should  get  myself  some 
how  conveyed  to  Monte  Cassino  and  to  Subiaco  at  least :  such  an 
affront  to  the  passion  of  curiosity,  the  generally  infatuated  state 
then  kindled,  would  any  suspicion  of  my  foredoomed,  my  all  but 
interminable,  privation  during  visits  to  come  have  seemed  to  me. 
Fortune,  in  the  event,  had  never  favoured  my  going,  but  I  was  to 
give  myself  up  at  last  to  the  sense  of  her  quite  taking  me  by  the 
hand,  and  that  is  how  I  now  think  of  our  splendid  June  day  at 
Subiaco.  The  note  of  the  wondrous  place  itself  is  conventional 

'[  305  ] 


ITALIAN   HOURS 

"wild"  Italy  raised  to  the  highest  intensity,  the  ideally,  the  sub 
limely  conventional  and  wild,  complete  and  supreme  in  itself, 
without  a  disparity  or  a  flaw ;  which  character  of  perfect  pictur 
esque  orthodoxy  seemed  more  particularly  to  begin  for  me,  I 
remember,  as  we  passed,  on  our  way,  through  that  indescribable 
and  indestructible  Tivoli,  where  the  jumble  of  the  elements  of  the 
familiarly  and  exploitedly,  the  all  too  notoriously  fair  and  queer, 
was  more  violent  and  vociferous  than  ever  —  so  the  whole  spec 
tacle  there  seemed  at  once  to  rejoice  in  cockneyfication  and  to 
resist  it.  There  at  least  I  had  old  memories  to  renew  —  includ 
ing  that  in  especial,  from  a  few  years  back,  of  one  of  the  longest, 
hottest,  dustiest  return-drives  to  Rome  that  the  Campagna  on 
a  sirocco  day  was  ever  to  have  treated  me  to. 

That  was  to  be  more  than  made  up  on  this  later  occasion  by 
an  hour  of  early  evening,  snatched  on  the  run  back  to  Rome,  that 
remains  with  me  as  one  of  those  felicities  we  are  wise  to  leave  for 
ever,  just  as  they  are,  just,  that  is,  where  they  fell,  never  attempt 
ing  to  renew  or  improve  them.  So  happy  a  chance  was  it  that  en 
sured  me  at  the  afternoon's  end  a  solitary  stroll  through  the  Villa 
d*  Este,  where  the  day's  invasion,  whatever  it  might  have  been, 
had  left  no  traces  and  where  I  met  nobody  in  the  great  rococo  pas 
sages  and  chambers,  and  in  the  prodigious  alleys  and  on  the  re 
peated  flights  of  tortuous  steps,  but  the  haunting  Genius  of  Style, 
into  whose  noble  battered  old  face,  as  if  it  had  come  out  clearer 
in  the  golden  twilight  and  on  recognition  of  response  so  deeply 
moved,  I  seemed  to  exhale  my  sympathy.  This  was  truly,  amid  a 
conception  and  order  of  things  all  mossed  over  from  disuse,  but 

[306] 


OTHER   ROMAN   NEIGHBOURHOODS 

still  without  a  form  abandoned  or  a  principle  disowned,  one  of 
the  hours  that  one  does  n't  forget.  The  ruined  fountains  seemed 
strangely  to  wait,  in  the  stillness  and  under  cover  of  the  approach 
ing  dusk,  not  to  begin  ever  again  to  play,  also,  but  just  only  to  be 
tenderly  imagined  to  do  so ;  quite  as  everything  held  its  breath,  at 
the  mystic  moment,  for  the  drop  of  the  cruel  and  garish  exposure, 
for  the  Spirit  of  the  place  to  steal  forth  and  go  his  round.  The 
vistas  of  the  innumerable  mighty  cypresses  ranged  themselves,  in 
their  files  and  companies,  like  beaten  heroes  for  their  captain's 
review;  the  great  artificial  "works"  of  every  description,  cascades, 
hemicycles,  all  graded  and  grassed  and  stone-seated  as  for  floral 
games,  mazes  and  bowers  and  alcoves  and  grottos,  brave  indis 
soluble  unions  of  the  planted  and  the  builded  symmetry,  with  the 
terraces  and  staircases  that  overhang  and  the  arcades  and  clois 
ters  that  underspread,  made  common  cause  together  as  for  one's 
taking  up  a  little,  in  kindly  lingering  wonder,  the  "feeling"  out  of 
which  they  have  sprung.  One  did  n't  see  it,  under  the  actual 
influence,  one  would  n't  for  the  world  have  seen  it,  as  that  they 
longed  to  be  justified,  during  a  few  minutes  in  the  twenty-four 
hours,  of  their  absurdity  of  pomp  and  circumstance  —  but  only 
that  they  asked  for  company,  once  in  a  way,  as  they  were  so  splen 
didly  formed  to  give  it,  and  that  the  best  company,  in  a  changed 
world,  at  the  end  of  time,  what  could  they  hope  it  to  be  but  just 
the  lone,  the  dawdling  person  of  taste,  the  visitor  with  a  flicker  of 
fancy,  not  to  speak  of  a  pang  of  pity,  to  spare  for  them  ?  It  was  in 
the  flicker  of  fancy,  no  doubt,  that  as  I  hung  about  the  great  top 
most  terrace  in  especial,  and  then  again  took  my  way  through  the 

[307] 


ITALIAN   HOURS 

high  gaunt  corridors  and  the  square  and  bare  alcoved  and  recessed 
saloons,  all  overscored  with  such  a  dim  waste  of  those  painted, 
those  delicate  and  capricious  decorations  which  the  loggie  of 
the  Vatican  promptly  borrowed  from  the  ruins  of  the  Palatine, 
or  from  whatever  other  revealed  and  inspiring  ancientries,  and 
which  make  ghostly  confession  here  of  that  descent,  I  gave  the  rein 
to  my  sense  of  the  sinister  too,  of  that  vague  after-taste  as  of  evil 
things  that  lurks  so  often,  for  a  suspicious  sensibility,  wherever  the 
terrible  game  of  the  life  of  the  Renaissance  was  played  as  the 
Italians  played  it ;  wherever  the  huge  tessellated  chessboard  seems 
to  stretch  about  us,  swept  bare,  almost  always  violently  swept 
bare,  of  its  chiselled  and  shifting  figures,  of  every  value  and  degree, 
but  with  this  echoing  desolation  itself  representing  the  long  gasp, 
as  it  were,  of  overstrained  time,  the  great  after-hush  that  follows 
on  things  too  wonderful  or  dreadful. 

I  am  putting  here,  however,  my  cart  before  my  horse,  for  the 
hour  just  glanced  at  was  but  a  final  tag  to  a  day  of  much  brighter 
curiosity,  and  which  seemed  to  take  its  baptism,  as  we  passed 
through  prodigious  perched  and  huddled,  adorably  scattered  and 
animated  and  even  crowded  Tivoli,  from  the  universal  happy 
spray  of  the  drumming  Anio  waterfalls,  all  set  in  their  permanent 
rainbows  and  Sibylline  temples  and  classic  allusions  and  Byronic 
quotations ;  a  wondrous  romantic  jumble  of  such  things  and  quite 
others  —  heterogeneous  inns  and  clamorous  guingettes  and  facto 
ries  grabbing  at  the  torrent,  to  say  nothing  of  innumerable  guides 
and  donkeys  and  white-tied,  swallow-tailed  waiters  dashing  out 
of  grottos  and  from  under  cataracts,  and  of  the  air,  on  the  part 

[308] 


OTHER   ROMAN   NEIGHBOURHOODS 

of  the  whole  population,  of  standing  about,  in  the  most  charac 
teristic  contadino  manner,  to  pounce  on  you  and  take  you  some 
where,  snatch  you  from  somebody  else,  shout  something  at  you, 
the  aqueous  and  other  uproar  permitting,  and  then  charge  you  for 
it,  your  innocence  aiding.  I  'm  afraid  our  run  the  rest  of  the  way 
to  Subiaco  remains  with  me  but  as  an  after-sense  of  that  exhila 
ration,  in  spite  of  our  rising  admirably  higher,  all  the  while, 
and  plunging  constantly  deeper  into  splendid  solitary  gravities, 
supreme  romantic  solemnities  and  sublimities,  of  landscape.  The 
Benedictine  convent,  which  clings  to  certain  more  or  less  verti 
ginous  ledges  and  slopes  of  a  vast  precipitous  gorge,  constitutes, 
with  the  whole  perfection  of  its  setting,  the  very  ideal  of  the  tra 
dition  of  that  extraordinary  in  the  romantic  handed  down  to  us, 
as  the  most  attaching  and  inviting  spell  of  Italy,  by  all  the  old 
academic  literature  of  travel  and  art  of  the  Salvator  Rosas  and 
Claudes.  This  is  the  main  tribute  I  may  pay  in  a  few  words  to  an 
impression  of  which  a  sort  of  divine  Tightness  of  oddity,  a  pictorial 
felicity  that  was  almost  not  of  this  world,  but  of  a  higher  degree 
of  distinction  altogether,  affected  me  as  the  leading  note;  yet 
about  the  whole  exquisite  complexity  of  which  I  can't  pretend  to 
be  informing. 

All  the  elements  of  the  scene  melted  for  me  together ;  even  from 
the  pause  for  luncheon  on  a  grassy  wayside  knoll,  over  heaven 
knows  what  admirable  preparatory  headlong  slopes  and  ravines 
and  iridescent  distances,  under  spreading  chestnuts  and  in  the 
high  air  that  was  cool  and  sweet,  to  the  final  pedestrian  climb  of 
sinuous  mountain-paths  that  the  shining  limestone  and  the  strong 

[  309  ] 


ITALIAN   HOURS 

green  of  shrub  and  herbage  made  as  white  as  silver.  There  the 
miraculous  home  of  St.  Benedict  awaited  us  in  the  form  of  a 
builded  and  pictured-over  maze  of  chapels  and  shrines,  cells  and 
corridors,  stupefying  rock-chambers  and  caves,  places  all  at  an 
extraordinary  variety  of  different  levels  and  with  labyrinthine 
intercommunications;  there  the  spirit  of  the  centuries  sat  like 
some  invisible  icy  presence  that  only  permits  you  to  stare  and 
wonder.  I  stared,  I  wondered,  I  went  up  and  down  and  in  and  out 
and  lost  myself  in  the  fantastic  fable  of  the  innumerable  hard 
facts  themselves;  and  whenever  I  could,  above  all,  I  peeped  out 
of  small  windows  and  hung  over  chance  terraces  for  the  love  of 
the  general  outer  picture,  the  splendid  fashion  in  which  the  fretted 
mountains  of  marble,  as  they  might  have  been,  round  about, 
seemed  to  inlay  themselves,  for  the  effect  of  the  "distinction" 
I  speak  of,  with  vegetations  of  dark  emerald.  There  above  all 
—  or  at  least  in  what  such  aspects  did  further  for  the  prodigy 
of  the  Convent,  whatever  that  prodigy  might  for  do  them  —  was, 
to  a  life-long  victim  of  Italy,  almost  verily  as  never  before,  the 
operation  of  the  old  love-philtre;  there  were  the  inexhaustible 
sources  of  interest  and  charm. 

These  mystic  fountains  broke  out  for  me  elsewhere,  again  and 
again,  I  rejoice  to  say  —  and  perhaps  more  particularly,  to  be 
frank  about  it,  where  the  ground  about  them  was  pressed  with 
due  emphasis  of  appeal  by  the  firm  wheels  of  the  great  winged 
car.  I  motored,  under  invitation  and  protection,  repeatedly  back 
into  the  sense  of  the  other  years,  that  sense  of  the  "old"  and 
comparatively  idle  Rome  of  my  particular  infatuated  prime  which 


OTHER  ROMAN   NEIGHBOURHOODS 

I  was  living  to  see  superseded,  and  this  even  when  the  fond  vista 
bristled  with  innumerable  "signs  of  the  times,"  unmistakable 
features  of  the  new  era,  that,  by  I  scarce  know  what  perverse 
law,  succeeded  in  ministering  to  a  happy  effect.  Some  of  these 
false  notes  proceed  simply  from  the  immense  growth  of  every  sort 
of  facilitation  —  so  that  people  are  much  more  free  than  of  old 
to  come  and  go  and  do,  to  inquire  and  explore,  to  pervade  and 
generally  "infest";  with  a  consequent  loss,  for  the  fastidious 
individual,  of  his  blest  earlier  sense,  not  infrequent,  of  having  the 
occasion  and  the  impression,  as  he  used  complacently  to  say,  all 
to  himself.  We  none  of  us  had  anything  quite  all  to  ourselves 
during  an  afternoon  at  Ostia,  on  a  beautiful  June  Sunday ;  it  was 
a  different  affair,  rather,  from  the  long,  the  comparatively  slow 
and  quite  unpeopled  drive  that  I  was  to  remember  having  last 
taken  early  in  the  autumn  thirty  years  before,  and  which  occupied 
the  day  —  with  the  aid  of  a  hamper  from  once  supreme  old  Spill- 
man,  the  provider  for  picnics  to  a  vanished  world  (since  I  sus 
pect  the  antique  ideal  of  "a  picnic  in  the  Campagna,"  the  fond 
est  conception  of  a  happy  day,  has  lost  generally  much  of  its 
glamour).  Our  idyllic  afternoon,  at  any  rate,  left  no  chord  of 
sensibility  that  could  possibly  have  been  in  question  untouched 
—  not  even  that  of  tea  on  the  shore  at  Fiumincino,  after  we 
had  spent  an  hour  among  the  ruins  of  Ostia  and  seen  our  car  fer 
ried  across  the  Tiber,  almost  saffron-coloured  here  and  swirling 
towards  its  mouth,  on  a  boat  that  was  little  more  than  a  big 
rustic  raft  and  that  yet  bravely  resisted  the  prodigious  weight. 
What  shall  I  say,  in  the  way  of  the  particular,  of  the  general 


ITALIAN   HOURS 

felicity  before  me,  for  the  sweetness  of  the  hour  to  which  the 
incident  just  named,  with  its  strange  and  amusing  juxtapositions 
of  the  patriarchally  primitive  and  the  insolently  supersubtle,  the 
earliest  and  the  latest  efforts  of  restless  science,  were  almost 
immediately  to  succeed  ? 

We  had  but  skirted  the  old  gold-and-brown  walls  of  Castel 
Fusano,  where  the  massive  Chigi  tower  and  the  immemorial 
stone-pines  and  the  afternoon  sky  and  the  desolate  sweetness 
and  concentrated  rarity  of  the  picture  all  kept  their  appointment, 
to  fond  memory,  with  that  especial  form  of  Roman  faith,  the 
fine  aesthetic  conscience  in  things,  that  is  never,  never  broken. 
We  had  wound  through  tangled  lanes  and  met  handsome  sal 
low  country-folk  lounging  at  leisure,  as  became  the  Sunday,  and 
ever  so  pleasantly  and  garishly  clothed,  if  not  quite  consistently 
costumed,  as  just  on  purpose  to  feed  our  wanton  optimism ;  and 
then  we  had  addressed  ourselves  with  a  soft  superficiality  to  the 
open,  the  exquisite  little  Ostian  reliquary,  an  exhibition  of  stony 
vaguenesses  half  straightened  out.  The  ruins  of  the  ancient  port 
of  Rome,  the  still  recoverable  identity  of  streets  and  habitations 
and  other  forms  of  civil  life,  are  a  not  inconsiderable  handful, 
though  making  of  the  place  at  best  a  very  small  sister  to  Pom 
peii  ;  but  a  soft  superficiality  is  ever  the  refuge  of  my  shy  sense 
before  any  ghost  of  informed  reconstitution,  and  I  plead  my 
surrender  to  it  with  the  less  shame  that  I  believe  I  "enjoy" 
such  scenes  even  on  such  futile  pretexts  as  much  as  it  can  be 
appointed  them  by  the  invidious  spirit  of  History  to  be  enjoyed. 
It  may  be  said,  of  course,  that  enjoyment,  question-begging  term 

[312  ] 


OTHER   ROMAN   NEIGHBOURHOODS 

at  best,  is  n't  in  these  austere  connections  designated  —  but  rather 
some  principle  of  appreciation  that  can  at  least  give  a  coherent 
account  of  itself.  On  that  basis  then  —  as  I  could,  I  profess,  but 
revel  in  the  looseness  of  my  apprehension,  so  wide  it  seemed 
to  fling  the  gates  of  vision  and  divination — I  won't  pretend  to 
dot,  as  it  were,  too  many  of  the  i's  of  my  incompetence.  I  was 
competent  only  to  have  been  abjectly  interested.  On  reflection, 
moreover,  I  see  that  no  impression  of  over-much  company  in 
vaded  the  picture  till  the  point  was  exactly  reached  for  its  con 
tributing  thoroughly  to  character  and  amusement;  across  at 
Fiumincino,  which  the  age  of  the  bicycle  has  made,  in  a  small 
way,  the  handy  Gravesend  or  Coney  Island  of  Rome,  the  cafes 
and  birrerie  were  at  high  pressure,  and  the  bustle  all  motley 
and  friendly  beside  the  melancholy  river,  where  the  water-side 
life  itself  had  twenty  quaint  and  vivid  notes  and  where  a  few 
upstanding  objects,  ancient  or  modern,  looked  eminent  and  inter 
esting  against  the  delicate  Roman  sky  that  dropped  down  and 
down  to  the  far-spreading  marshes  of  malaria.  Besides  which 
"company"  is  ever  intensely  gregarious,  hanging  heavily  to 
gether  and  easily  outwitted;  so  that  we  had  but  to  proceed  a 
scant  distance  further  and  meet  the  tideless  Mediterranean,  where 
it  tumbled  in  a  trifle  breezily  on  the  sands,  to  be  all  to  ourselves 
with  our  tea-basket,  quite  as  in  the  good  old  fashion  —  only  in 
truth  with  the  advantage  that  the  contemporary  tea-basket  is 
so  much  improved. 

I  jumble  my  memories  as  a  tribute  to  the  whole  idyll  —  I  give 
the  golden  light  in  which  they  come  back  to  me  for  what  it  is 


ITALIAN   HOURS 

worth ;  worth,  I  mean,  as  allowing  that  the  possibilities  of  charm 
of  the  Witch  of  the  Seven  Hills,  as  we  used  to  call  her  in  maga 
zines,  have  n't  all  been  vulgarised  away.  It  was  precisely  there, 
on  such  an  occasion  and  in  such  a  place,  that  this  might  seem 
signally  to  have  happened;  whereas  in  fact  the  mild  suburban 
riot,  in  which  the  so  gay  but  so  light  potations  before  the  array 
of  little  houses  of  entertainment  were  what  struck  one  as  really 
making  most  for  mildness,  was  brushed  over  with  a  fabled  grace, 
was  harmonious,  felicitous,  distinguished,  quite  after  the  fashion 
of  some  thoroughly  trained  chorus  or  phalanx  of  opera  or  ballet. 
Bicycles  were  stacked  up  by  the  hundred ;  the  youth  of  Rome 
are  ardent  cyclists,  with  a  great  taste  for  flashing  about  in  more 
or  less  denuded  or  costumed  athletic  and  romantic  bands  and 
guilds,  and  on  our  return  cityward,  toward  evening,  along  the 
right  bank  of  the  river,  the  road  swarmed  with  the  patient 
wheels  and  bent  backs  of  these  budding  cives  Romani  quite  to 
the  effect  of  its  finer  interest.  Such  at  least,  I  felt,  could  only  be 
one's  acceptance  of  almost  any  feature  of  a  scene  bathed  in  that 
extraordinarily  august  air  that  the  waning  Roman  day  is  so 
insidiously  capable  of  taking  on  when  any  other  element  of  style 
happens  at  all  to  contribute.  Were  n't  they  present,  these  other 
elements,  in  the  great  classic  lines  and  folds,  the  fine  academic 
or  historic  attitudes  of  the  darkening  land  itself  as  it  hung  about 
the  old  highway,  varying  its  vague  accidents,  but  achieving  al 
ways  perfect  "  composition  "  ?  I  shamelessly  add  that  cockney- 
fied  impression,  at  all  events,  to  what  I  have  called  my  jumble ; 
Rome,  to  which  we  all  swept  on  together  in  the  wondrous  glow- 


OTHER  ROMAN   NEIGHBOURHOODS 

ing  medium,  saved  everything,  spreading  afar  her  wide  wing  and 
applying  after  all  but  her  supposed  grand  gift  of  the  secret  of 
salvation.  We  kept  on  and  on  into  the  great  dim  rather  sordidly 
papal  streets  that  approach  the  quarter  of  St.  Peter's ;  to  the  ac 
companiment,  finally,  of  that  markedly  felt  provocation  of  fond 
wonder  which  had  never  failed  to  lie  in  wait  for  me  under  any 
question  of  a  renewed  glimpse  of  the  huge  unvisited  rear  of  the 
basilica.  There  was  no  renewed  glimpse  just  then,  in  the  gloam 
ing  ;  but  the  region  I  speak  of  had  been  for  me,  in  fact,  during  the 
previous  weeks,  less  unvisited  than  ever  before,  so  that  I  had 
come  to  count  an  occasional  walk  round  and  about  it  as  quite 
of  the  essence  of  the  convenient  small  change  with  which  the 
heterogeneous  City  may  still  keep  paying  you.  These  frequen- 
tations  in  the  company  of  a  sculptor  friend  had  been  incidental 
to  our  reaching  a  small  artistic  foundry  of  fine  metal,  an  odd 
and  interesting  little  establishment  placed,  as  who  should  say  in 
the  case  of  such  a  mere  left-over  scrap  of  a  large  loose  margin, 
nowhere :  it  lurked  so  unsuspectedly,  that  is,  among  the  various 
queer  things  that  Rome  comprehensively  refers  to  as  "behind 
St.  Peter's." 

We  had  passed  then,  on  the  occasion  of  our  several  pilgrim 
ages,  in  beneath  the  great  flying,  or  at  least  straddling  buttresses 
to  the  left  of  the  mighty  facade,  where  you  enter  that  great  idle 
precinct  of  fine  dense  pavement  and  averted  and  sacrificed  grand 
eur,  the  reverse  of  the  monstrous  medal  of  the  front.  Here  the 
architectural  monster  rears  its  back  and  shoulders  on  an  equal 
scale  and  this  whole  unregarded  world  of  colossal  consistent  sym- 


ITALIAN   HOURS 

metry  and  hidden  high  finish  gives  you  the  measure  of  the  vast 
total  treasure  of  items  and  features.  The  outward  face  of  all  sorts 
of  inward  majesties  of  utility  and  ornament  here  above  all  cor 
respondingly  reproduces  itself;  the  expanses  of  golden  traver 
tine  —  the  freshness  of  tone,  the  cleanness  of  surface,  in  the  sunny 
air,  being  extraordinary  —  climb  and  soar  and  spread  under  the 
crushing  weight  of  a  scheme  carried  out  in  every  ponderous  par 
ticular.  Never  was  such  a  show  of  wasted  art,  of  pomp  for  pomp's 
sake,  as  where  all  the  chapels  bulge  and  all  the  windows,  each  one 
a  separate  constructional  masterpiece,  tower  above  almost  grass- 
grown  vacancy ;  with  the  full  and  immediate  effect,  of  course,  of 
reading  us  a  lesson  on  the  value  of  lawful  pride.  The  pride  is 
the  pride  of  indifference  as  to  whether  a  greatness  so  founded  be 
gaped  at  in  all  its  features  or  not.  My  friend  and  I  were  alone  to 
gape  at  them  most  often  while,  for  the  unfailing  impression  of 
them,  on  our  way  to  watch  the  casting  of  our  figure,  we  extended 
our  circuit  of  the  place.  To  which  I  may  add,  as  another  exam 
ple  of  that  tentative,  that  appealing  twitch  of  the  garment  of 
Roman  association  of  which  one  kept  renewing  one's  conscious 
ness,  the  half-hour  at  the  little  foundry  itself  was  all  charming 
—  with  its  quite  shabby  and  belittered  and  ramshackle  recall  of 
the  old  Roman  "art-life"  of  one's  early  dreams.  Everything  was 
somehow  in  the  picture,  the  rickety  sheds,  the  loose  parapher 
nalia,  the  sunny,  grassy  yard  where  a  goat  was  browsing;  then 
the  queer  interior  gloom  of  the  pits,  frilled  with  little  overlooking 
scaffoldings  and  bridges,  for  the  sinking  fireward  of  the  image 
that  was  to  take  on  hardness ;  and  all  the  pleasantness  and  quick- 


OTHER   ROMAN   NEIGHBOURHOODS 

ness,  the  beguiling  refinement,  of  the  three  or  four  light  fine 
"hands"  of  whom  the  staff  consisted  and  into  whose  type  and 
tone  one  liked  to  read,  with  whatever  harmless  extravagance,  so 
many  signs  that  a  lively  sense  of  stiff  processes,  even  in  humble 
life,  could  still  leave  untouched  the  traditional  rare  feeling  for 
the  artistic.  How  delightful  such  an  occupation  in  such  a  general 
setting  —  those  of  my  friend,  I  at  such  moments  irrepressibly 
moralised;  and  how  one  might  after  such  a  fashion  endlessly 
go  and  come  and  ask  nothing  better;  or  if  better,  only  so  to 
the  extent  of  another  impression  I  was  to  owe  to  him:  that  of  an 
evening  meal  spread,  in  the  warm  still  darkness  that  made  no 
candle  flicker,  on  the  wide  high  space  of  an  old  loggia  that  over 
hung,  in  one  quarter,  the  great  obelisked  Square  preceding  one  of 
the  Gates,  and  in  the  other  the  Tiber  and  the  far  Trastevere  and 
more  things  than  I  can  say —  above  all,  as  it  were,  the  whole 
backward  past,  the  mild  confused  romance  of  the  Rome  one  had 
loved  and  of  which  one  was  exactly  taking  leave  under  protection 
of  the  friendly  lanterned  and  garlanded  feast  and  the  command 
ing,  all-embracing  roof-garden.  It  was  indeed  a  reconciling,  it 
was  an  altogether  penetrating,  last  hour. 

1909. 


A  CHAIN  OF  CITIES 


A  CHAIN  OF  CITIES 


NE  day  in  midwinter,  some  years  since, 
during  a  journey  from  Rome  to  Florence 
perforce  too  rapid  to  allow  much  wayside 
sacrifice  to  curiosity,  I  waited  for  the  train 
at  Narni.  There  was  time  to  stroll  far 
enough  from  the  station  to  have  a  look 
at  the  famous  old  bridge  of  Augustus, 
broken  short  off  in  mid-Tiber.  While  I 
stood  admiring  the  measure  of  impression  was  made  to  over 
flow  by  the  gratuitous  grace  of  a  white-cowled  monk  who  came 
trudging  up  the  road  that  wound  to  the  gate  of  the  town.  Narni 
stood,  in  its  own  presented  felicity,  on  a  hill  a  good  space  away, 
boxed  in  behind  its  perfect  grey  wall,  and  the  monk,  to  oblige  me, 
crept  slowly  along  and  disappeared  within  the  aperture.  Every 
thing  was  distinct  in  the  clear  air,  and  the  view  exactly  as  like 
the  bit  of  background  by  an  Umbrian  master  as  it  ideally  should 
have  been.  The  winter  is  bare  and  brown  enough  in  southern 
Italy  and  the  earth  reduced  to  more  of  a  mere  anatomy  than 
among  ourselves,  for  whom  the  very  cranerie  of  its  exposed  state, 
naked  and  unashamed,  gives  it  much  of  the  robust  serenity,  not 
of  a  fleshless  skeleton,  but  of  a  fine  nude  statue.  In  these  regions 
at  any  rate,  the  tone  of  the  air,  for  the  eye,  during  the  brief  deso- 

[321  ] 


ITALIAN  HOURS 

lation,  has  often  an  extraordinary  charm :  nature  still  smiles  as 
with  the  deputed  and  provisional  charity  of  colour  and  light,  the 
duty  of  not  ceasing  to  cheer  man's  heart.  Her  whole  behav 
iour,  at  the  time,  cast  such  a  spell  on  the  broken  bridge,  the 
little  walled  town  and  the  trudging  friar,  that  I  turned  away  with 
the  impatient  vow  and  the  fond  vision  of  how  I  would  take  the 
journey  again  and  pause  to  my  heart's  content  at  Narni,  at  Spo- 
leto,  at  Assisi,  at  Perugia,  at  Cortona,  at  Arezzo.  But  we  have 
generally  to  clip  our  vows  a  little  when  we  come  to  fulfil  them ; 
and  so  it  befell  that  when  my  blest  springtime  arrived  I  had  to 
begin  as  resignedly  as  possible,  yet  with  comparative  meagre- 
ness,  at  Assisi. 

I  suppose  enjoyment  would  have  a  simple  zest  which  it  often 
lacks  if  we  always  did  things  at  the  moment  we  want  to,  for 
it's  mostly  when  we  can't  that  we're  thoroughly  sure  we  would, 
and  we  can  answer  too  little  for  moods  in  the  future  conditional. 
Winter  at  least  seemed  to  me  to  have  put  something  into  these 
seats  of  antiquity  that  the  May  sun  had  more  or  less  melted  away 
—  a  desirable  strength  of  tone,  a  depth  upon  depth  of  queer- 
ness  and  quaintness.  Assisi  had  been  in  the  January  twilight, 
after  my  mere  snatch  at  Narni,  a  vignette  out  of  some  brown  old 
missal.  But  you'll  have  to  be  a  fearless  explorer  now  to  find  of 
a  fine  spring  day  any  such  cluster  of  curious  objects  as  does  n't 
seem  made  to  match  before  anything  else  Mr.  Baedeker's  polyglot 
estimate  of  its  chief  recommendations.  This  great  man  was  at 
Assisi  in  force,  and  a  brand-new  inn  for  his  accommodation  has 
just  been  opened  cheek  by  jowl  with  the  church  of  St.  Francis. 

[322  ] 


A   CHAIN   OF   CITIES 

I  don't  know  that  even  the  dire  discomfort  of  this  harbourage 
makes  it  seem  less  impertinent ;  but  I  confess  I  sought  its  protec 
tion,  and  the  great  view  seemed  hardly  less  beautiful  from  my 
window  than  from  the  gallery  of  the  convent.  This  view  embraces 
the  whole  wide  reach  of  Umbria,  which  becomes  as  twilight 
deepens  a  purple  counterfeit  of  the  misty  sea.  The  visitor's  first 
errand  is  with  the  church ;  and  it 's  fair  furthermore  to  admit  that 
when  he  has  crossed  that  threshold  the  position  and  quality  of 
his  hotel  cease  for  the  time  to  be  matters  of  moment.  This  two 
fold  temple  of  St.  Francis  is  one  of  the  very  sacred  places  of  Italy, 
and  it  would  be  hard  to  breathe  anywhere  an  air  more  heavy 
with  holiness.  Such  seems  especially  the  case  if  you  happen  thus 
to  have  come  from  Rome,  where  everything  ecclesiastical  is,  in 
aspect,  so  very  much  of  this  world  —  so  florid,  so  elegant,  so  full 
of  accommodations  and  excrescences.  The  mere  site  here  makes 
for  authority,  and  they  were  brave  builders  who  laid  the  founda 
tion-stones.  The  thing  rises  straight  from  a  steep  mountain-side 
and  plunges  forward  on  its  great  substructure  of  arches  even  as 
a  crowned  headland  may  frown  over  the  main.  Before  it  stretches 
a  long,  grassy  piazza,  at  the  end  of  which  you  look  up  a  small  grey 
street,  to  see  it  first  climb  a  little  way  the  rest  of  the  hill  and  then 
pause  and  leave  a  broad  green  slope,  crested,  high  in  the  air, 
with  a  ruined  castle.  When  I  say  before  it  I  mean  before  the 
upper  church ;  for  by  way  of  doing  something  supremely  hand 
some  and  impressive  the  sturdy  architects  of  the  thirteenth  cen 
tury  piled  temple  upon  temple  and  bequeathed  a  double  version 
of  their  idea.  One  may  .imagine  them  to  have  intended  perhaps 


ITALIAN   HOURS 

an  architectural  image  of  the  relation  between  heart  and  head. 
Entering  the  lower  church  at  the  bottom  of  the  great  flight  of 
steps  which  leads  from  the  upper  door,  you  seem  to  push  at  least 
into  the  very  heart  of  Catholicism. 

For  the  first  minutes  after  leaving  the  clearer  gloom  you  catch 
nothing  but  a  vista  of  low  black  columns  closed  by  the  great  fan 
tastic  cage  surrounding  the  altar,  which  is  thus  placed,  by  your 
impression,  in  a  sort  of  gorgeous  cavern.  Gradually  you  distin 
guish  details,  become  accustomed  to  the  penetrating  chill,  and 
even  manage  to  make  out  a  few  frescoes;  but  the  general  effect 
remains  splendidly  sombre  and  subterranean.  The  vaulted  roof 
is  very  low  and  the  pillars  dwarfish,  though  immense  in  girth,  as 
befits  pillars  supporting  substantially  a  cathedral.  The  tone  of 
the  place  is  a  triumph  of  mystery,  the  richest  harmony  of  lurk 
ing  shadows  and  dusky  corners,  all  relieved  by  scattered  images 
and  scintillations.  There  was  little  light  but  what  came  through 
the  windows  of  the  choir  over  which  the  red  curtains  had  been 
dropped  and  were  beginning  to  glow  with  the  downward  sun. 
The  choir  was  guarded  by  a  screen  behind  which  a  dozen  vener 
able  voices  droned  vespers ;  but  over  the  top  of  the  screen  came 
the  heavy  radiance  and  played  among  the  ornaments  of  the  high 
fence  round  the  shrine,  casting  the  shadow  of  the  whole  elaborate 
mass  forward  into  the  obscured  nave.  The  darkness  of  vaults 
and  side-chapels  is  overwrought  with  vague  frescoes,  most  of 
them  by  Giotto  and  his  school,  out  of  which  confused  richness 
the  terribly  distinct  little  faces  characteristic  of  these  artists  stare 
at  you  with  a  solemn  formalism.  Some  are  faded  and  injured, 

[324] 


A  CHAIN   OF   CITIES 

and  many  so  ill-lighted  and  ill-placed  that  you  can  only  glance 
at  them  with  decent  conjecture;  the  great  group,  however  — 
four  paintings  by  Giotto  on  the  ceiling  above  the  altar  —  may  be 
examined  with  some  success.  Like  everything  of  that  grim  and 
beautiful  master  they  deserve  examination;  but  with  the  effect 
ever  of  carrying  one's  appreciation  in  and  in,  as  it  were,  rather 
than  of  carrying  it  out  and  out,  off  and  off,  as  happens  for  us  with 
those  artists  who  have  been  helped  by  the  process  of  "evolution" 
to  grow  wings.  This  one,  "going  in"  for  emphasis  at  any  price, 
stamps  hard,  as  who  should  say,  on  the  very  spot  of  his  idea  — 
thanks  to  which  fact  he  has  a  concentration  that  has  never  been 
surpassed.  He  was  in  other  words,  in  proportion  to  his  means, 
a  genius  supremely  expressive ;  he  makes  the  very  shade  of  an 
intended  meaning  or  a  represented  attitude  so  unmistakable  that 
his  figures  affect  us  at  moments  as  creatures  all  too  suddenly, 
too  alarmingly,  too  menacingly  met.  Meagre,  primitive,  unde 
veloped,  he  yet  is  immeasurably  strong ;  he  even  suggests  that  if 
he  had  lived  the  due  span  of  years  later  Michael  Angelo  might 
have  found  a  rival.  Not  that  he  is  given,  however,  to  compli 
cated  postures  or  superhuman  flights.  The  something  strange 
that  troubles  and  haunts  us  in  his  work  springs  rather  from  a 
kind  of  fierce  familiarity. 

It  is  part  of  the  wealth  of  the  lower  church  that  it  contains 
an  admirable  primitive  fresco  by  an  artist  of  genius  rarely  en 
countered,  Pietro  Cavallini,  pupil  of  Giotto.  This  represents  the 
Crucifixion;  the  three  crosses  rising  into  a  sky  spotted  with  the 
winged  heads  of  angels  while  a  dense  crowd  presses  below.  You 


ITALIAN   HOURS 

will  nowhere  see  anything  more  direfully  lugubrious,  or  more  ap 
proaching  for  direct  force,  though  not  of  course  for  amplitude  of 
style,  Tintoretto's  great  renderings  of  the  scene  in  Venice.  The 
abject  anguish  of  the  crucified  and  the  straddling  authority  and 
brutality  of  the  mounted  guards  in  the  foreground  are  contrasted 
in  a  fashion  worthy  of  a  great  dramatist.  But  the  most  poignant 
touch  is  the  tragic  grimaces  of  the  little  angelic  heads  that  fall 
like  hailstones  through  the  dark  air.  It  is  genuine  realistic  weep 
ing,  the  act  of  irrepressible  "  crying,"  that  the  painter  has  de 
picted,  and  the  effect  is  pitiful  at  the  same  time  as  grotesque. 
There  are  many  more  frescoes  besides;  all  the  chapels  on  one 
side  are  lined  with  them,  but  these  are  chiefly  interesting  in  their 
general  impressiveness  —  as  they  people  the  dim  recesses  with 
startling  presences,  with  apparitions  out  of  scale.  Before  leaving 
the  place  I  lingered  long  near  the  door,  for  I  was  sure  I  should  n't 
soon  again  enjoy  such  a  feast  of  scenic  composition.  The  oppo 
site  end  glowed  with  subdued  colour;  the  middle  portion  was 
vague  and  thick  and  brown,  with  two  or  three  scattered  wor 
shippers  looming  through  the  obscurity ;  while,  all  the  way  down, 
the  polished  pavement,  its  uneven  slabs  glittering  dimly  in  the 
obstructed  light,  was  of  the  very  essence  of  expensive  picture. 
It  is  certainly  desirable,  if  one  takes  the  lower  church  of  St. 
Francis  to  represent  the  human  heart,  that  one  should  find  a  few 
bright  places  there.  But  if  the  general  effect  is  of  brightness 
terrorised  and  smothered,  is  the  symbol  less  valid  ?  For  the  con 
tracted,  prejudiced,  passionate  heart  let  it  stand. 
One  thing  at  all  events  we  can  say,  that  we  should  rejoice  to 

[326] 


A  CHAIN  OF  CITIES 

boast  as  capacious,  symmetrical  and  well-ordered  a  head  as  the 
upper  sanctuary.  Thanks  to  these  merits,  in  spite  of  a  brave 
array  of  Giottesque  work  which  has  the  advantage  of  being 
easily  seen,  it  lacks  the  great  character  of  its  counterpart.  The 
frescoes,  which  are  admirable,  represent  certain  leading  events 
in  the  life  of  St.  Francis,  and  suddenly  remind  you,  by  one  of 
those  anomalies  that  are  half  the  secret  of  the  consummate  mise- 
en-scene  of  Catholicism,  that  the  apostle  of  beggary,  the  saint 
whose  only  tenement  in  life  was  the  ragged  robe  which  barely 
covered  him,  is  the  hero  of  this  massive  structure.  Church  upon 
church,  nothing  less  will  adequately  shroud  his  consecrated  clay. 
The  great  reality  of  Giotto's  designs  adds  to  the  helpless  won 
derment  with  which  we  feel  the  passionate  pluck  of  the  Hero, 
the  sense  of  being  separated  from  it  by  an  impassable  gulf,  the 
reflection  on  all  that  has  come  and  gone  to  make  morality  at  that 
vertiginous  pitch  impossible.  There  are  no  such  high  places 
of  humility  left  to  climb  to.  An  observant  friend  who  has  lived 
long  in  Italy  lately  declared  to  me,  however,  that  she  detested 
the  name  of  this  moralist,  deeming  him  chief  propagator  of  the 
Italian  vice  most  trying  to  the  would-be  lover  of  the  people, 
the  want  of  personal  self-respect.  There  is  a  solidarity  in  the  use 
of  soap,  and  every  cringing  beggar,  idler,  liar  and  pilferer  flour 
ished  for  her  under  the  shadow  of  the  great  Francisan  indiffer 
ence  to  it.  She  was  possibly  right;  at  Rome,  at  Naples,  I  might 
have  admitted  she  was  right;  but  at  Assisi,  face  to  face  with 
Giotto's  vivid  chronicle,  we  admire  too  much  in  its  main  subject 
the  exquisite  play  of  .that  subject's  genius  —  we  don't  remit  to 

[327] 


ITALIAN   HOURS 

him,  and  this  for  very  envy,  a  single  throb  of  his  consciousness. 
It  took  in,  that  human,  that  divine  embrace,  everything  but  soap. 
I  should  find  it  hard  to  give  an  orderly  account  of  my  next 
adventures  or  impressions  at  Assisi,  which  could  n't  well  be  any 
thing  more  than  mere  romantic  flanerie.  One  may  easily  plead 
as  the  final  result  of  a  meditation  at  the  shrine  of  St.  Francis 
a  great  and  even  an  amused  charity.  This  state  of  mind  led  me 
slowly  up  and  down  for  a  couple  of  hours  through  the  steep 
little  streets,  and  at  last  stretched  itself  on  the  grass  with  me  in 
the  shadow  of  the  great  ruined  castle  that  decorates  so  grandly 
the  eminence  above  the  town.  I  remember  edging  along  the 
sunless  side  of  the  small  mouldy  houses  and  pausing  very  often 
to  look  at  nothing  in  particular.  It  was  all  very  hot,  very  hushed, 
very  resignedly  but  very  persistently  old.  A  wheeled  vehicle 
in  such  a  place  is  an  event,  and  the  forestiero's  interrogative 
tread  in  the  blank  sonorous  lanes  has  the  privilege  of  bringing 
the  inhabitants  to  their  doorways.  Some  of  the  better  houses, 
however,  achieve  a  sombre  stillness  that  protests  against  the  least 
curiosity  as  to  what  may  happen  in  any  such  century  as  this. 
You  wonder,  as  you  pass,  what  lingering  old-world  social  types 
vegetate  there,  but  you  won't  find  out;  albeit  that  in  one  very 
silent  little  street  I  had  a  glimpse  of  an  open  door  which  I  have 
not  forgotten.  A  long-haired  peddler  who  must  have  been  a  Jew, 
and  who  yet  carried  without  prejudice  a  burden  of  mass-books 
and  rosaries,  was  offering  his  wares  to  a  stout  old  priest.  The 
priest  had  opened  the  door  rather  stingily  and  appeared  half 
heartedly  to  dismiss  him.  But  the  peddler  held  up  something  I 

[328  ] 


A   CHAIN   OF   CITIES 

could  n't  see ;  the  priest  wavered  with  a  timorous  concession  to 
profane  curiosity  and  then  furtively  pulled  the  agent  of  sophis 
tication,  or  whatever  it  might  be,  into  the  house.  I  should  have 
liked  to  enter  with  that  worthy. 

I  saw  later  some  gentlemen  of  Assisi  who  also  seemed  bored 
enough  to  have  found  entertainment  in  his  tray.  They  were  at 
the  door  of  the  cafe  on  the  Piazza,  and  were  so  thankful  to  me 
for  asking  them  the  way  to  the  cathedral  that,  answering  all  in 
chorus,  they  lighted  up  with  smiles  as  sympathetic  as  if  I  had 
done  them  a  favour.  Of  that  type  were  my  mild,  my  delicate  ad 
ventures.  The  Piazza  has  a  fine  old  portico  of  an  ancient  Temple 
of  Minerva  —  six  fluted  columns  and  a  pediment,  of  beautiful 
proportions,  but  sadly  battered  and  decayed.  Goethe,  I  believe, 
found  it  much  more  interesting  than  the  mighty  mediaeval  church, 
and  Goethe,  as  a  cicerone,  doubtless  could  have  persuaded  one 
that  it  was  so;  bu.t  in  the  humble  society  of  Murray  we  shall 
most  of  us  find  a  richer  sense  in  the  later  monument.  I  found 
quaint  old  meanings  enough  in  the  dark  yellow  facade  of  the 
small  cathedral  as  I  sat  on  a  stone  bench  by  the  oblong  green 
stretched  before  it.  This  is  a  pleasing  piece  of  Italian  Gothic  and, 
like  several  of  its  companions  at  Assisi,  has  an  elegant  wheel 
window  and  a  number  of  grotesque  little  carvings  of  creatures 
human  and  bestial.  If  with  Goethe  I  were  to  balance  anything 
against  the  attractions  of  the  double  church  I  should  choose  the 
ruined  castle  on  the  hill  above  the  town.  I  had  been  having 
glimpses  of  it  all  the  afternoon  at  the  end  of  steep  street-vistas, 
and  promising  myself  half-an-hour  beside  its  grey  walls  at  sun- 

[329] 


ITALIAN   HOURS 

set.  The  sun  was  very  late  setting,  and  my  half-hour  became  a 
long  lounge  in  the  lee  of  an  abutment  which  arrested  the  gentle 
uproar  of  the  wind.  The  castle  is  a  splendid  piece  of  ruin,  perched 
on  the  summit  of  the  mountain  to  whose  slope  Assisi  clings  and 
dropping  a  pair  of  stony  arms  to  enclose  the  little  town  in  its 
embrace.  The  city  wall,  in  other  words,  straggles  up  the  steep 
green  hill  and  meets  the  crumbling  skeleton  of  the  fortress. 
On  the  side  off  from  the  town  the  mountain  plunges  into  a  deep 
ravine,  the  opposite  face  of  which  is  formed  by  the  powerful  un- 
draped  shoulder  of  Monte  Subasio,  a  fierce  reflector  of  the  sun. 
Gorge  and  mountain  are  wild  enough,  but  their  frown  expires  in 
the  teeming  softness  of  the  great  vale  of  Umbria.  To  lie  aloft 
there  on  the  grass,  with  silver-grey  ramparts  at  one's  back  and 
the  warm  rushing  wind  in  one's  ears,  and  watch  the  beautiful 
plain  mellow  into  the  tones  of  twilight,  was  as  exquisite  a  form 
of  repose  as  ever  fell  to  a  tired  tourist's  lot. 

Perugia  too  has  an  ancient  stronghold,  which  one  must  speak 
of  in  earnest  as  that  unconscious  humorist  the  classic  American 
traveller  is  supposed  invariably  to  speak  of  the  Colosseum:  it 
will  be  a  very  handsome  building  when  it's  finished.  Even  Peru 
gia  is  going  the  way  of  all  Italy  —  straightening  out  her  streets, 
preparing  her  ruins,  laying  her  venerable  ghosts.  The  castle  is 
being  completely  remis  a  neuf — a  Massachusetts  schoolhouse 
couldn't  cultivate  a  "smarter"  ideal.  There  are  shops  in  the 
basement  and  fresh  putty  on  all  the  windows;  so  that  the  only 
thing  proper  to  a  castle  it  has  kept  is  its  magnificent  position 
and  range,  which  you  may  enjoy  from  the  broad  platform  where 

[330] 


A  CHAIN   OF   CITIES 

the  Perugini  assemble  at  eventide.  Perugia  is  chiefly  known  to 
fame  as  the  city  of  Raphael's  master;  but  it  has  a  still  higher  claim 
to  renown  and  ought  to  figure  in  the  gazetteer  of  fond  memory 
as  the  little  City  of  the  infinite  View.  The  small  dusky,  crooked 
place  tries  by  a  hundred  prompt  pretensions,  immediate  contor 
tions,  rich  mantling  flushes  and  other  ingenuities,  to  waylay  your 
attention  and  keep  it  at  home ;  but  your  consciousness,  alert  and 
uneasy  from  the  first  moment,  is  all  abroad  even  when  your  back 
is  turned  to  the  vast  alternative  or  when  fifty  house-walls  conceal 
it,  and  you  are  for  ever  rushing  up  by-streets  and  peeping  round 
corners  in  the  hope  of  another  glimpse  or  reach  of  it.  As  it  stretches 
away  before  you  in  that  eminent  indifference  to  limits  which  is 
at  the  same  time  at  every  step  an  eminent  homage  to  style,  it  is 
altogether  too  free  and  fair  for  compasses  and  terms.  You  can 
only  say,  and  rest  upon  it,  that  you  prefer  it  to  any  other  visible 
fruit  of  position  or  claimed  empire  of  the  eye  that  you  are  any 
where  likely  to  enjoy. 

For  it  is  such  a  wondrous  mixture  of  blooming  plain  and  gleam 
ing  river  and  wavily-multitudinous  mountain  vaguely  dotted  with 
pale  grey  cities,  that,  placed  as  you  are,  roughly  speaking,  in 
the  centre  of  Italy,  you  all  but  span  the  divine  peninsula  from 
sea  to  sea.  Up  the  long  vista  of  the  Tiber  you  look  —  almost  to 
Rome ;  past  Assisi,  Spello,  Foligno,  Spoleto,  all  perched  on  their 
respective  heights  and  shining  through  the  violet  haze.  To  the 
north,  to  the  east,  to  the  west,  you  see  a  hundred  variations  of 
the  prospect,  of  which  I  have  kept  no  record.  Two  notes  only 
I  have  made :  one  — 'though  who  has  n't  made  it  over  and  over 

[331  ] 


ITALIAN  HOURS 

again  ?  —  on  the  exquisite  elegance  of  mountain  forms  in  this 
endless  play  of  the  excrescence,  it  being  exactly  as  if  there  were 
variation  of  sex  in  the  upheaved  mass,  with  the  effect  here  mainly 
of  contour  and  curve  and  complexion  determined  in  the  feminine 
sense.  It  further  came  home  to  me  that  the  command  of  such  an 
outlook  on  the  world  goes  far,  surely,  to  give  authority  and  cen- 
trality  and  experience,  those  of  the  great  seats  of  dominion,  even 
to  so  scant  a  cluster  of  attesting  objects  as  here.  It  must  deepen 
the  civic  consciousness  and  take  off  the  edge  of  ennui.  It  performs 
this  kindly  office,  at  any  rate,  for  the  traveller  who  may  overstay 
his  curiosity  as  to  Perugino  and  the  Etruscan  relics.  It  continu 
ally  solicits  his  wonder  and  praise  —  it  reinforces  the  historic 
page.  I  spent  a  week  in  the  place,  and  when  it  was  gone  I  had 
had  enough  of  Perugino,  but  had  n't  had  enough  of  the  View. 

I  should  perhaps  do  the  reader  a  service  by  telling  him  just 
how  a  week  at  Perugia  may  be  spent.  His  first  care  must  be  to 
ignore  the  very  dream  of  haste,  walking  everywhere  very  slowly 
and  very  much  at  random,  and  to  impute  an  esoteric  sense  to 
almost  anything  his  eye  may  happen  to  encounter.  Almost  every 
thing  in  fact  lends  itself  to  the  historic,  the  romantic,  the  aes 
thetic  fallacy  —  almost  everything  has  an  antique  queerness  and 
richness  that  ekes  out  the  reduced  state ;  that  of  a  grim  and  bat 
tered  old  adventuress,  the  heroine  of  many  shames  and  scandals, 
surviving  to  an  extraordinary  age  and  a  considerable  penury, 
but  with  ancient  gifts  of  princes  and  other  forms  of  the  wages  of 
sin  to  show,  and  the  most  beautiful  garden  of  all  the  world  to 
sit  and  doze  and  count  her  beads  in  and  remember.  He  must 

[332] 


A  CHAIN   OF   CITIES 

hang  a  great  deal  about  the  huge  Palazzo  Pubblico,  which  in 
deed  is  very  well  worth  any  acquaintance  you  may  scrape  with 
it.  It  masses  itself  gloomily  above  the  narrow  street  to  an  immense 
elevation,  and  leads  up  the  eye  along  a  cliff-like  surface  of  rugged 
wall,  mottled  with  old  scars  and  new  repairs,  to  the  loggia  dizzily 
perched  on  its  cornice.  He  must  repeat  his  visit  to  the  Etruscan 
Gate,  by  whose  immemorial  composition  he  must  indeed  linger 
long  to  resolve  it  back  into  the  elements  originally  attending  it. 
He  must  uncap  to  the  irrecoverable,  the  inimitable  style  of  the 
statue  of  Pope  Julius  III  before  the  cathedral,  remembering 
that  Hawthorne  fabled  his  Miriam,  in  an  air  of  romance  from 
which  we  are  well-nigh  as  far  to-day  as  from  the  building  of 
Etruscan  gates,  to  have  given  rendezvous  to  Kenyon  at  its 
base.  Its  material  is  a  vivid  green  bronze,  and  the  mantle  and 
tiara  are  covered  with  a  delicate  embroidery  worthy  of  a  silver 
smith. 

Then  our  leisurely  friend  must  bestow  on  Perugino's  frescoes 
in  the  Exchange,  and  on  his  pictures  in  the  University,  all  the 
placid  contemplation  they  deserve.  He  must  go  to  the  theatre 
every  evening,  in  an  orchestra-chair  at  twenty-two  soldi,  and 
enjoy  the  curious  didacticism  of  "Amore  senza  Stima,"  "Seve- 
rita  e  Debolezza,"  "La  Societa  Equivoca,"  and  other  popular 
specimens  of  contemporaneous  Italian  comedy  —  unless  indeed 
the  last-named  be  not  the  edifying  title  applied,  for  peninsular 
use,  to  "Le  Demi-Monde"  of  the  younger  Dumas.  I  shall  be 
very  much  surprised  if,  at  the  end  of  a  week  of  this  varied  enter 
tainment,  he  has  n't  learnt  how  to  live,  not  exactly  in,  but  with, 

[333] 


ITALIAN   HOURS 

Perugia.  His  strolls  will  abound  in  small  accidents  and  mer 
cies  of  vision,  but  of  which  a  dozen  pencil-strokes  would  be  a 
better  memento  than  this  poor  word-sketching.  From  the  hill  on 
which  the  town  is  planted  radiate  a  dozen  ravines,  down  whose 
sides  the  houses  slide  and  scramble  with  an  alarming  indifference 
to  the  cohesion  of  their  little  rugged  blocks  of  flinty  red  stone. 
You  ramble  really  nowhither  without  emerging  on  some  small 
court  or  terrace  that  throws  your  view  across  a  gulf  of  tangled 
gardens  or  vineyards  and  over  to  a  cluster  of  serried  black  dwell 
ings  which  have  to  hollow  in  their  backs  to  keep  their  balance 
on  the  opposite  ledge.  On  archways  and  street-staircases  and 
dark  alleys  that  bore  through  a  density  of  massive  basements, 
and  curve  and  climb  and  plunge  as  they  go,  all  to  the  truest 
mediaeval  tune,  you  may  feast  your  fill.  These  are  the  local,  the 
architectural,  the  compositional  commonplaces.  Some  of  the 
little  streets  in  out-of-the-way  corners  are  so  rugged  and  brown 
and  silent  that  you  may  imagine  them  passages  long  since  hewn 
by  the  pick-axe  in  a  deserted  stone-quarry.  The  battered  black 
houses,  of  the  colour  of  buried  things  —  things  buried,  that  is, 
in  accumulations  of  time,  closer  packed,  even  as  such  are,  than 
spadefuls  of  earth  —  resemble  exposed  sections  of  natural  rock ; 
none  the  less  so  when,  beyond  some  narrow  gap,  you  catch  the 
blue  and  silver  of  the  sublime  circle  of  landscape. 

But  I  ought  n't  to  talk  of  mouldy  alleys,  or  yet  of  azure  dis 
tances,  as  if  they  formed  the  main  appeal  to  taste  in  this  accom 
plished  little  city.  In  the  Sala  del  Cambio,  where  in  ancient  days 
the  money-changers  rattled  their  embossed  coin  and  figured  up 

[334  ] 


:ri<rsc.\.\    C.ATKNYAY.    I-KIUV.IA. 


A  CHAIN   OF   CITIES 

their  profits,  you  may  enjoy  one  of  the  serenest  aesthetic  pleasures 
that  the  golden  age  of  art  anywhere  offers  us.  Bank  parlours, 
I  believe,  are  always  handsomely  appointed,  but  are  even  those 
of  Messrs.  Rothschild  such  models  of  mural  bravery  as  this  little 
counting-house  of  a  bygone  fashion  ?  The  bravery  is  Perugino's 
own ;  for,  invited  clearly  to  do  his  best,  he  left  it  as  a  lesson  to 
the  ages,  covering  the  four  low  walls  and  the  vault  with  scriptu 
ral  and  mythological  figures  of  extraordinary  beauty.  They  are 
ranged  in  artless  attitudes  round  the  upper  half  of  the  room  —  the 
sibyls,  the  prophets,  the  philosophers,  the  Greek  and  Roman 
heroes  —  looking  down  with  broad  serene  faces,  with  small  mild 
eyes  and  sweet  mouths  that  commit  them  to  nothing  in  particular 
unless  to  being  comfortably  and  charmingly  alive,  at  the  incon 
gruous  proceedings  of  a  Board  of  Brokers.  Had  finance  a  very 
high  tone  in  those  days,  or  were  genius  and  faith  then  simply  as 
frequent  as  capital  and  enterprise  are  among  ourselves?  The 
great  distinction  of  the  Sala  del  Cambio  is  that  it  has  a  friendly 
Yes  for  both  these  questions.  There  was  a  rigid  transactional 
probity,  it  seems  to  say;  there  was  also  a  high  tide  of  inspiration. 
About  the  artist  himself  many  things  come  up  for  us  —  more 
than  I  can  attempt  in  their  order ;  for  he  was  not,  I  think,  to  an 
attentive  observer,  the  mere  smooth  and  entire  and  devout  spirit 
we  at  first  are  inclined  to  take  him  for.  He  has  that  about  him 
which  leads  us  to  wonder  if  he  may  not,  after  all,  play  a  proper 
part  enough  here  as  the  patron  of  the  money-changers.  He  is  the 
delight  of  a  million  of  young  ladies ;  but  who  knows  whether  we 
should  n't  find  in  his  works,  might  we  "go  into"  them  a  little,  a 

[  335  ] 


ITALIAN   HOURS 

trifle  more  of  manner  than  of  conviction,  and  of  system  than  of 
deep  sincerity  ? 

This,  I  allow,  would  put  no  great  affront  on  them,  and  one 
speculates  thus  partly  but  because  it's  a  pleasure  to  hang  about 
him  on  any  pretext,  and  partly  because  his  immediate  effect  is 
to  make  us  quite  inordinately  embrace  the  pretext  of  his  lovely 
soul.  His  portrait,  painted  on  the  wall  of  the  Sala  (you  may  see 
it  also  in  Rome  and  Florence)  might  at  any  rate  serve  for  the 
likeness  of  Mr.  Worldly-Wiseman  in  Bunyan's  allegory.  He 
was  fond  of  his  glass,  I  believe,  and  he  made  his  art  lucrative. 
This  tradition  is  not  refuted  by  his  preserved  face,  and  after  some 
experience  —  or  rather  after  a  good  deal,  since  you  can't  have 
a  little  of  Perugino,  who  abounds  wherever  old  masters  congre 
gate,  so  that  one  has  constantly  the  sense  of  being  "in"  for  all 
there  is  —  you  may  find  an  echo  of  it  in  the  uniform  type  of  his 
creatures,  their  monotonous  grace,  their  prodigious  invariability. 
He  may  very  well  have  wanted  to  produce  figures  of  a  substantial, 
yet  at  the  same  time  of  an  impeccable  innocence ;  but  we  feel  that 
he  had  taught  himself  how  even  beyond  his  own  belief  in  them, 
and  had  arrived  at  a  process  that  acted  at  last  mechanically.  I 
confess  at  the  same  time  that,  so  interpreted,  the  painter  affects 
me  as  hardly  less  interesting,  and  one  can't  but  become  conscious 
of  one's  style  when  one's  style  has  become,  as  it  were,  so  con 
scious  of  one's,  or  at  least  of  its  own,  fortune.  If  he  was  the  in 
ventor  of  a  remarkably  calculable  facture,  a  calculation  that  never 
fails  is  in  its  way  a  grace  of  the  first  order,  and  there  are  things 
in  this  special  appearance  of  perfection  of  practice  that  make 

[336] 


A  CHAIN  OF  CITIES 

him  the  forerunner  of  a  mighty  and  more  modern  race.  More 
than  any  of  the  early  painters  who  strongly  charm,  you  may 
take  all  his  measure  from  a  single  specimen.  The  other  samples 
infallibly  match,  reproduce  unerringly  the  one  type  he  had  mas 
tered,  but  which  had  the  good  fortune  to  be  adorably  fair,  to 
seem  to  have  dawned  on  a  vision  unsullied  by  the  shadows  of 
earth.  Which  truth,  moreover,  leaves  Perugino  all  delightful  as 
composer  and  draughtsman ;  he  has  in  each  of  these  characters 
a  sort  of  spacious  neatness  which  suggests  that  the  whole  con 
ception  has  been  washed  clean  by  some  spiritual  chemistry  the 
last  thing  before  reaching  the  canvas;  after  which  it  has  been 
applied  to  that  surface  with  a  rare  economy  of  time  and  means. 
Giotto  and  Fra  Angelico,  beside  him,  are  full  of  interesting 
waste  and  irrelevant  passion.  In  the  sacristy  of  the  charming 
church  of  San  Pietro  —  a  museum  of  pictures  and  carvings  —  is 
a  row  of  small  heads  of  saints  formerly  covering  the  frame  of 
the  artist's  Ascension,  carried  off  by  the  French.  It  is  almost 
miniature  work,  and  here  at  least  Perugino  triumphs  in  sincerity, 
in  apparent  candour,  as  well  as  in  touch.  Two  of  the  holy  men 
are  reading  their  breviaries,  but  with  an  air  of  infantine  inno 
cence  quite  consistent  with  their  holding  the  book  upside  down. 
Between  Perugia  and  Cortona  lies  the  large  weedy  water  of 
Lake  Thrasymene,  turned  into  a  witching  word  for  ever  by  Han 
nibal's  recorded  victory  over  Rome.  Dim  as  such  records  have 
become  to  us  and  remote  such  realities,  he  is  yet  a  passionless 
pilgrim  who  does  n't,  as  he  passes,  of  a  heavy  summer's  day, 
feel  the  air  and  the  light  .and  the  very  faintness  of  the  breeze  all 

[337] 


ITALIAN   HOURS 

charged  and  haunted  with  them,  all  interfused  as  with  the  wasted 
ache  of  experience  and  with  the  vague  historic  gaze.  Processions 
of  indistinguishable  ghosts  bore  me  company  to  Cortona  itself, 
most  sturdily  ancient  of  Italian  towns.  It  must  have  been  a 
seat  of  ancient  knowledge  even  when  Hannibal  and  Flaminius 
came  to  the  shock  of  battle,  and  have  looked  down  afar  from  its 
grey  ramparts  on  the  contending  swarm  with  something  of  the 
philosophic  composure  suitable  to  a  survivor  of  Pelasgic  and 
Etruscan  revolutions.  These  grey  ramparts  are  in  great  part  still 
visible,  and  form  the  chief  attraction  of  Cortona.  It  is  perched 
on  the  very  pinnacle  of  a  mountain,  and  I  wound  and  doubled 
interminably  over  the  face  of  the  great  hill,  while  the  jumbled 
roofs  and  towers  of  the  arrogant  little  city  still  seemed  nearer 
to  the  sky  than  to  the  railway-station.  "Rather  rough,"  Murray 
pronounces  the  local  inn;  and  rough  indeed  it  was;  there  was 
scarce  a  square  foot  of  it  that  you  would  have  cared  to  stroke 
with  your  hand.  The  landlord  himself,  however,  was  all  smooth 
ness  and  the  best  fellow  in  the  world ;  he  took  me  up  into  a  rickety 
old  loggia  on  the  tip-top  of  his  establishment  and  played  show 
man  as  to  half  the  kingdoms  of  the  earth,  I  was  free  to  decide 
at  the  same  time  whether  my  loss  or  my  gain  was  the  greater  for 
my  seeing  Cortona  through  the  medium  of  a  festa.  On  the  one 
hand  the  museum  was  closed  (and  in  a  certain  sense  the  smaller 
and  obscurer  the  town  the  more  I  like  the  museum) ;  the  churches 
—  an  interesting  note  of  manners  and  morals  —  were  impenetra 
bly  crowded,  though,  for  that  matter,  so  was  the  cafe,  where  I 
found  neither  an  empty  stool  nor  the  edge  of  a  table.  I  missed  a 

1 338] 


A     STRKKT.     COKIONA. 


A   CHAIN   OF   CITIES 

sight  of  the  famous  painted  Muse,  the  art-treasure  of  Cortona 
and  supposedly  the  most  precious,  as  it  falls  little  short  of  being 
the  only,  sample  of  the  Greek  painted  picture  that  has  come 
down  to  us.  On  the  other  hand,  I  saw  —  but  this  is  what  I  saw. 
A  part  of  the  mountain-top  is  occupied  by  the  church  of  St. 
Margaret,  and  this  was  St.  Margaret's  day.  The  houses  pause 
roundabout  it  and  leave  a  grassy  slope,  planted  here  and  there 
with  lean  black  cypresses.  The  contadini  from  near  and  far 
had  congregated  in  force  and  were  crowding  into  the  church  or 
winding  up  the  slope.  When  I  arrived  they  were  all  kneeling 
or  uncovered ;  a  bedizened  procession,  with  banners  and  censers, 
bearing  abroad,  I  believe,  the  relics  of  the  saint,  was  re-entering 
the  church.  The  scene  made  one  of  those  pictures  that  Italy 
still  brushes  in  for  you  with  an  incomparable  hand  and  from 
an  inexhaustible  palette  when  you  find  her  in  the  mood.  The 
day  was  superb  —  the  sky  blazed  overhead  like  a  vault  of  deep 
est  sapphire.  The  grave  brown  peasantry,  with  no  great  accent 
of  costume,  but  with  sundry  small  ones  —  decked,  that  is,  in 
cheap  fineries  of  scarlet  and  yellow  —  made  a  mass  of  motley 
colour  in  the  high  wind-stirred  light.  The  procession  halted  in 
the  pious  hush,  and  the  lovely  land  around  and  beneath  us 
melted  away,  almost  to  either  sea,  in  tones  of  azure  scarcely  less 
intense  than  the  sky.  Behind  the  church  was  an  empty  crum 
bling  citadel,  with  half-a-dozen  old  women  keeping  the  gate  for 
coppers.  Here  were  views  and  breezes  and  sun  and  shade  and 
grassy  corners  to  the  heart's  content,  together  with  one  could  n't 
say  what  huge  seated  rnystic  melancholy  presence,  the  after-taste 

[339] 


ITALIAN  HOURS 

of  everything  the  still  open  maw  of  time  had  consumed.  I  chose 
a  spot  that  fairly  combined  all  these  advantages,  a  spot  from 
which  I  seemed  to  look,  as  who  should  say,  straight  down  the 
throat  of  the  monster,  no  dark  passage  now,  but  with  all  the 
glorious  day  playing  into  it,  and  spent  a  good  part  of  my  stay  at 
Cortona  lying  there  at  my  length  and  observing  the  situation 
over  the  top  of  a  volume  that  I  must  have  brought  in  my  pocket 
just  for  that  especial  wanton  luxury  of  the  resource  provided  and 
slighted.  In  the  afternoon  I  came  down  and  hustled  a  while 
through  the  crowded  little  streets,  and  then  strolled  forth  under 
the  scorching  sun  and  made  the  outer  circuit  of  the  wall.  There 
I  found  tremendous  uncemented  blocks ;  they  glared  and  twinkled 
in  the  powerful  light,  and  I  had  to  put  on  a  blue  eye-glass  in 
order  to  throw  into  its  proper  perspective  the  vague  Etruscan 
past,  obtruded  and  magnified  in  such  masses  quite  as  with  the 
effect  of  inadequately-withdrawn  hands  and  feet  in  photographs. 
I  spent  the  next  day  at  Arezzo,  but  I  confess  in  very  much 
the  same  uninvestigating  fashion — taking  in  the  "general  im 
pression,"  I  dare  say,  at  every  pore,  but  rather  systematically 
leaving  the  dust  of  the  ages  unfingered  on  the  stored  records :  I 
should  doubtless,  in  the  poor  time  at  my  command,  have  fingered 
it  to  so  little  purpose.  The  seeker  for  the  story  of  things  has 
moreover,  if  he  be  worth  his  salt,  a  hundred  insidious  arts ;  and 
in  that  case  indeed  —  by  which  I  mean  when  his  sensibility  has 
come  duly  to  adjust  itself —  the  story  assaults  him  but  from  too 
many  sides.  He  even  feels  at  moments  that  he  must  sneak  along 
on  tiptoe  in  order  not  to  have  too  much  of  it.  Besides  which 

[  340  ] 


A  CHAIN   OF   CITIES 

the  case  all  depends  on  the  kind  of  use,  the  range  of  application, 
his  tangled  consciousness,  or  his  intelligible  genius,  say,  may  come 
to  recognize  for  it.  At  Arezzo,  however  this  might  be,  one  was 
far  from  Rome,  one  was  well  within  genial  Tuscany,  and  the 
historic,  the  romantic  decoction  seemed  to  reach  one's  lips  in 
less  stiff  doses.  There  at  once  was  the  "general  impression" 
the  exquisite  sense  of  the  scarce  expressible  Tuscan  quality,  which 
makes  immediately,  for  the  whole  pitch  of  one's  perception,  a 
grateful,  a  not  at  all  strenuous  difference,  attaches  to  almost  any 
coherent  group  of  objects,  to  any  happy  aspect  of  the  scene,  for 
a  main  note,  some  mild  recall,  through  pleasant  friendly  col 
our,  through  settled  ample  form,  through  something  homely  and 
economic  too  at  the  very  heart  of  "style,"  of  an  identity  of  tem 
perament  and  habit  with  those  of  the  divine  little  Florence  that 
one  originally  knew.  Adorable  Italy  in  which,  for  the  constant 
renewal  of  interest,  of  attention,  of  affection,  these  refinements 
of  variety,  these  so  harmoniously-grouped  and  individually-sea 
soned  fruits  of  the  great  garden  of  history,  keep  presenting  them 
selves!  It  seemed  to  fall  in  with  the  cheerful  Tuscan  mildness 
for  instance  —  sticking  as  I  do  to  that  ineffectual  expression 
of  the  Tsucan  charm,  of  the  yellow-brown  Tuscan  dignity  at 
large  —  that  the  ruined  castle  on  the  hill  (with  which  agreeable 
feature  Arezzo  is  no  less  furnished  than  Assisi  and  Cortona)  had 
been  converted  into  a  great  blooming,  and  I  hope  all  profitable, 
podere  or  market-garden.  I  lounged  away  the  half-hours  there 
under  a  spell  as  potent  as  the  "wildest"  forecast  of  propriety 
—  propriety  to  all  the  particular  conditions  —  could  have  figured 

[341  ] 


ITALIAN  HOURS 

it.  I  had  seen  Santa  Maria  della  Pieve  and  its  campanile  of  quaint 
colonnades,  the  stately,  dusky  cathedral  —  grass-plotted  and 
residenced  about  almost  after  the  fashion  of  an  English  "close" 
—  and  John  of  Pisa's  elaborate  marble  shrine ;  I  had  seen  the 
museum  and  its  Etruscan  vases  and  majolica  platters.  These 
were  very  well,  but  the  old  pacified  citadel  somehow,  through 
a  day  of  soft  saturation,  placed  me  most  in  relation.  Beautiful 
hills  surrounded  it,  cypresses  cast  straight  shadows  at  its  corners, 
while  in  the  middle  grew  a  wondrous  Italian  tangle  of  wheat  and 
corn,  vines  and  figs,  peaches  and  cabbages,  memories  and  images, 
anything  and  everything. 

1873- 


SIENA  EARLY  AND  LATE 


SIENA  EARLY  AND  LATE 


X3RENCE  being  oppressively  hot  and 
delivered  over  to  the  mosquitoes,  the  occa 
sion  seemed  to  favour  that  visit  to  Siena 
which  I  had  more  than  once  planned 
and  missed.  I  arrived  late  in  the  evening, 
by  the  light  of  a  magnificent  moon,  and 
while  a  couple  of  benignantly-mumbling 
old  crones  were  making  up  my  bed  at  the 
inn  strolled  forth  in  quest  of  a  first  impression.  Five  minutes 
brought  me  to  where  I  might  gather  it  unhindered  as  it  bloomed 
in  the  white  moonshine.  The  great  Piazza  of  Siena  is  famous,  and 
though  in  this  day  of  multiplied  photographs  and  blunted  sur 
prises  and  profaned  revelations  none  of  the  world's  wonders  can 
pretend,  like  Wordsworth's  phantom  of  delight,  really  to  "startle 
and  waylay,"  yet  as  I  stepped  upon  the  waiting  scene  from  under 
a  dark  archway  I  was  conscious  of  no  loss  of  the  edge  of  a  pre 
cious  presented  sensibility.  The  waiting  scene,  as  I  have  called 
it,  was  in  the  shape  of  a  shallow  horse-shoe  —  as  the  untravelled 
reader  who  has  turned  over  his  travelled  friends'  portfolios  will 
respectfully  remember;  or,  better,  of  a  bow  in  which  the  high 

[345] 


ITALIAN   HOURS 

wide  face  of  the  Palazzo  Pubblico  forms  the  cord  and  everything 
else  the  arc.  It  was  void  of  any  human  presence  that  could  figure 
to  me  the  current  year ;  so  that,  the  moonshine  assisting,  I  had 
half-an-hour's  infinite  vision  of  mediaeval  Italy.  The  Piazza,  being 
built  on  the  side  of  a  hill  —  or  rather,  as  I  believe  science  affirms, 
in  the  cup  of  a  volcanic  crater  —  the  vast  pavement  converges 
downwards  in  slanting  radiations  of  stone,  the  spokes  of  a  great 
wheel,  to  a  point  directly  before  the  Palazzo,  which  may  mark 
the  hub,  though  it  is  nothing  more  ornamental  than  the  mouth 
of  a  drain.  The  great  monument  stands  on  the  lower  side  and 
might  seem,  in  spite  of  its  goodly  mass  and  its  embattled  cornice, 
to  be  rather  defiantly  out-countenanced  by  vast  private  construc 
tions  occupying  the  opposite  eminence.  This  might  be,  without 
the  extraordinary  dignity  of  the  architectural  gesture  with  which 
the  huge  high-shouldered  pile  asserts  itself. 

On  the  firm  edge  of  the  palace,  from  bracketed  base  to  grey- 
capped  summit  against  the  sky,  where  grows  a  tall  slim  tower 
which  soars  and  soars  till  it  has  given  notice  of  the  city's  great 
ness  over  the  blue  mountains  that  mark  the  horizon.  It  rises  as 
slender  and  straight  as  a  pennoned  lance  planted  on  the  steel- 
shod  toe  of  a  mounted  knight,  and  keeps  all  to  itself  in  the  blue 
air,  far  above  the  changing  fashions  of  the  market,  the  proud 
consciousness  or  rare  arrogance  once  built  into  it.  This  beau 
tiful  tower,  the  finest  thing  in  Siena  and,  in  its  rigid  fashion,  as 
permanently  fine  thus  as  a  really  handsome  nose  on  a  face  of  no 
matter  what  accumulated  age,  figures  there  still  as  a  Declaration 
of  Independence  beside  which  such  an  affair  as  ours,  thrown 

[346  ] 


SIENA  EARLY  AND  LATE 

off  at  Philadelphia,  appears  to  have  scarce  done  more  than 
helplessly  give  way  to  time.  Our  Independence  has  become  a 
dependence  on  a  thousand  such  dreadful  things  as  the  incorrupt 
declaration  of  Siena  strikes  us  as  looking  for  ever  straight  over  the 
level  of.  As  it  stood  silvered  by  the  moonlight,  while  my  greet 
ing  lasted,  it  seemed  to  speak,  all  as  from  soul  to  soul,  very  much 
indeed  as  some  ancient  worthy  of  a  lower  order,  buttonholing 
one  on  the  coveted  chance  and  at  the  quiet  hour,  might  have 
done,  of  a  state  of  things  long  and  vulgarly  superseded,  but  to 
the  pride  and  power,  the  once  prodigious  vitality,  of  which  who 
could  expect  any  one  effect  to  testify  more  incomparably,  more 
indestructibly,  quite,  as  it  were,  more  immortally  ?  The  gigan 
tic  houses  enclosing  the  rest  of  the  Piazza  took  up  the  tale  and 
mingled  with  it  their  burden.  "  We  are  very  old  and  a  trifle 
weary,  but  we  were  built  strong  and  piled  high,  and  we  shall 
last  for  many  an  age.  The  present  is  cold  and  heedless,  but  we 
keep  ourselves  in  heart  by  brooding  over  our  store  of  memories 
and  traditions.  We  are  haunted  houses  in  every  creaking  tim 
ber  and  aching  stone."  Such  were  the  gossiping  connections  I 
established  with  Siena  before  I  went  to  bed. 

Since  that  night  I  have  had  a  week's  daylight  knowledge  of 
the  surface  of  the  subject  at  least,  and  don't  know  how  I  can 
better  present  it  than  simply  as  another  and  a  vivider  page  of  the 
lesson  that  the  ever-hungry  artist  has  only  to  trust  old  Italy  for 
her  to  feed  him  at  every  single  step  from  her  hand  —  and  if  not 
with  one  sort  of  sweetly-stale  grain  from  that  wondrous  mill  of 
history  which  during  so  many  ages  ground  finer  than  any  other 

[347] 


ITALIAN  HOURS 

on  earth,  why  then  always  with  something  else.  Siena  has  at 
any  rate  "preserved  appearances  " — kept  the  greatest  number 
of  them,  that  is,  unaltered  for  the  eye  —  about  as  consistently  as 
one  can  imagine  the  thing  done.  Other  places  perhaps  may  treat 
you  to  as  drowsy  an  odour  of  antiquity,  but  few  exhale  it  from 
so  large  an  area.  Lying  massed  within  her  walls  on  a  dozen  clus 
tered  hill-tops,  she  shows  you  at  every  turn  in  how  much  greater 
a  way  she  once  lived ;  and  if  so  much  of  the  grand  manner  is  ex 
tinct,  the  receptacle  of  the  ashes  still  solidly  rounds  itself.  This 
heavy  general  stress  of  all  her  emphasis  on  the  past  is  what  she 
constantly  keeps  in  your  eyes  and  your  ears,  and  if  you  be  but  a 
casual  observer  and  admirer  the  generalised  response  is  mainly 
what  you  give  her.  The  casual  observer,  however  beguiled,  is 
mostly  not  very  learned,  not  over-equipped  in  advance  with  data ; 
he  has  n't  specialised,  his  notions  are  necessarily  vague,  the  chords 
of  his  imagination,  for  all  his  good-will,  are  inevitably  muffled 
and  weak.  But  such  as  it  is,  his  received,  his  welcome  impression 
serves  his  turn  so  far  as  the  life  of  sensibility  goes,  and  reminds 
him  from  time  to  time  that  even  the  lore  of  German  doctors  is 
but  the  shadow  of  satisfied  curiosity.  I  have  been  living  at  the 
inn,  walking  about  the  streets,  sitting  in  the  Piazza ;  these  are  the 
simple  terms  of  my  experience.  But  streets  and  inns  in  Italy  are 
the  vehicles  of  half  one's  knowledge;  if  one  has  no  fancy  for 
their  lessons  one  may  burn  one's  note-book.  In  Siena  everything 
is  Sienese.  The  inn  has  an  English  sign  over  the  door  —  a  little 
battered  plate  with  a  rusty  representation  of  the  lion  and  the  uni 
corn;  but  advance  hopefully  into  the  mouldy  stone  alley  which 

[348] 


SIENA  EARLY  AND  LATE 

serves  as  vestibule  and  you  will  find  local  colour  enough.  The 
landlord,  I  was  told,  had  been  servant  in  an  English  family, 
and  I  was  curious  to  see  how  he  met  the  probable  argument  of 
the  casual  Anglo-Saxon  after  the  latter's  first  twelve  hours  in  his 
establishment.  As  he  failed  to  appear  I  asked  the  waiter  if  he 
were  n't  at  home.  "Oh,"  said  the  latter,  "he's  a  piccolo  grasso 
vecchiotto  who  does  n't  like  to  move."  I'm  afraid  this  little  fat 
old  man  has  simply  a  bad  conscience.  It's  no  small  burden  for 
one  who  likes  the  Italians  —  as  who  does  n't,  under  this  restric 
tion  ?  —  to  have  so  much  indifference  even  to  rudimentary  puri 
fying  processes  to  dispose  of.  What  is  the  real  philosophy  of 
dirty  habits,  and  are  foul  surfaces  merely  superficial  ?  If  unclean 
manners  have  in  truth  the  moral  meaning  which  I  suspect  in  them 
we  must  love  Italy  better  than  consistency.  This  a  number  of  us 
are  prepared  to  do,  but  while  we  are  making  the  sacrifice  it  is  as 
well  we  should  be  aware. 

We  may  plead  moreover  for  these  impecunious  heirs  of  the 
past  that  even  if  it  were  easy  to  be  clean  in  the  midst  of  their 
mouldering  heritage  it  would  be  difficult  to  appear  so.  At  the 
risk  of  seeming  to  flaunt  the  silly  superstition  of  restless  renova 
tion  for  the  sake  of  renovation,  which  is  but  the  challenge  of  the 
infinitely  precious  principle  of  duration,  one  is  still  moved  to  say 
that  the  prime  result  of  one's  contemplative  strolls  in  the  dusky 
alleys  of  such  a  place  is  an  ineffable  sense  of  disrepair.  Every 
thing  is  cracking,  peeling,  fading,  crumbling,  rotting.  No  young 
Sienese  eyes  rest  upon  anything  youthful ;  they  open  into  a  world 
battered  and  befouled  with  long  use.  Everything  has  passed 

[  349  ] 


ITALIAN  HOURS 

its  meridian  except  the  brilliant  facade  of  the  cathedral,  which 
is  being  diligently  retouched  and  restored,  and  a  few  private 
palaces  whose  broad  fronts  seem  to  have  been  lately  furbished 
and  polished.  Siena  was  long  ago  mellowed  to  the  pictorial  tone; 
the  operation  of  time  is  now  to  deposit  shabbiness  upon  shabbi- 
ness.  But  it's  for  the  most  part  a  patient,  sturdy,  sympathetic 
shabbiness,  which  soothes  rather  than  irritates  the  nerves,  and 
has  in  many  cases  doubtless  as  long  a  career  to  run  as  most  of 
our  pert  and  shallow  freshnesses.  It  projects  at  all  events  a  deeper 
shadow  into  the  constant  twilight  of  the  narrow  streets  —  that 
vague  historic  dusk,  as  I  may  call  it,  in  which  one  walks  and 
wonders.  These  streets  are  hardly  more  than  sinuous  flagged 
alleys,  into  which  the  huge  black  houses,  between  their  almost 
meeting  cornices,  suffer  a  meagre  light  to  filter  down  over  rough- 
hewn  stone,  past  windows  often  of  graceful  Gothic  form,  and  great 
pendent  iron  rings  and  twisted  sockets  for  torches.  Scattered  over 
their  many-headed  hill,  they  suffer  the  roadway  often  to  incline 
to  the  perpendicular,  becoming  so  impracticable  for  vehicles 
that  the  sound  of  wheels  is  only  a  trifle  less  anomalous  than 
it  would  be  in  Venice.  But  all  day  long  there  comes  up  to  my 
window  an  incessant  shuffling  of  feet  and  clangour  of  voices. 
The  weather  is  very  warm  for  the  season,  all  the  world  is  out  of 
doors,  and  the  Tuscan  tongue  (which  in  Siena  is  reputed  to  have 
a  classic  purity)  wags  in  every  imaginable  key.  It  does  n't  rest 
even  at  night,  and  I  am  often  an  uninvited  guest  at  concerts  and 
conversazioni  at  two  o'clock  in  the  morning.  The  concerts  are 
sometimes  charming.  I  not  only  don't  curse  my  wakefulness, 

[350] 


SIENA  EARLY  AND  LATE 

but  go  to  my  window  to  listen.  Three  men  come  carolling  by, 
trolling  and  quavering  with  voices  of  delightful  sweetness,  or  a 
lonely  troubadour  in  his  shirt-sleeves  draws  such  artful  love- 
notes  from  his  clear,  fresh  tenor,  that  I  seem  for  the  moment 
to  be  behind  the  scenes  at  the  opera,  watching  some  Rubini  or 
Mario  go  "on"  and  waiting  for  the  round  of  applause.  In  the 
intervals  a  couple  of  friends  or  enemies  stop  —  Italians  always 
make  their  points  in  conversation  by  pulling  up,  letting  you  walk 
on  a  few  paces,  to  turn  and  find  them  standing  with  finger  on 
nose  and  engaging  your  interrogative  eye  —  they  pause,  by  a 
happy  instinct,  directly  under  my  window,  and  dispute  their 
point  or  tell  their  story  or  make  their  confidence.  One  scarce 
is  sure  which  it  may  be ;  everything  has  such  an  explosive  prompt 
ness,  such  a  redundancy  of  inflection  and  action.  But  everything 
for  that  matter  takes  on  such  dramatic  life  as  our  lame  collo 
quies  never  know  —  so  that  almost  any  uttered  communications 
here  become  an  acted  play,  improvised,  mimicked,  proportioned 
and  rounded,  carried  bravely  to  its  denoument.  The  speaker 
seems  actually  to  establish  his  stage  and  face  his  foot-lights,  to 
create  by  a  gesture  a  little  scenic  circumscription  about  him ;  he 
rushes  to  and  fro  and  shouts  and  stamps  and  postures,  he  ranges 
through  every  phase  of  his  inspiration.  I  noted  the  other  evening 
a  striking  instance  of  the  spontaneity  of  the  Italian  gesture,  in  the 
person  of  a  small  Sienese  of  I  hardly  know  what  exact  age  —  the 
age  of  inarticulate  sounds  and  the  experimental  use  of  a  spoon. 
It  was  a  Sunday  evening,  and  this  little  man  had  accompa 
nied  his  parents  to  the.cafe.  The  Caffe  Greco  at  Siena  is  a  most 

[351] 


ITALIAN  HOURS 

delightful  institution ;  you  get  a  capital  demi-tasse  for  three  sous, 
and  an  excellent  ice  for  eight,  and  while  you  consume  these  easy 
luxuries  you  may  buy  from  a  little  hunchback  the  local  weekly 
periodical,  the  Vita  Nuova,  for  three  centimes  (the  two  cen 
times  left  from  your  sou,  if  you  are  under  the  spell  of  this  magical 
frugality,  will  do  to  give  the  waiter).  My  young  friend  was  sit 
ting  on  his  father's  knee  and  helping  himself  to  the  half  of  a 
strawberry-ice  with  which  his  mamma  had  presented  him.  He 
had  so  many  misadventures  with  his  spoon  that  this  lady  at 
length  confiscated  it,  there  being  nothing  left  of  the  ice  but  a  little 
crimson  liquid  which  he  might  dispose  of  by  the  common  instinct 
of  childhood.  But  he  was  no  friend,  it  appeared,  to  such  free 
doms  ;  he  was  a  perfect  little  gentleman  and  he  resented  it  being 
expected  of  him  that  he  should  drink  down  his  remnant.  He  pro 
tested  therefore,  and  it  was  the  manner  of  his  protest  that  struck 
me.  He  did  n't  cry  audibly,  though  he  made  a  very  wry  face.  It 
was  no  stupid  squall,  and  yet  he  was  too  young  to  speak.  It  was 
a  penetrating  concord  of  inarticulately  pleading,  accusing  sounds, 
accompanied  by  gestures  of  the  most  exquisite  propriety.  These 
were  perfectly  mature;  he  did  everything  that  a  man  of  forty 
would  have  done  if  he  had  been  pouring  out  a  flood  of  sonorous 
eloquence.  He  shrugged  his  shoulders  and  wrinkled  his  eye 
brows,  tossed  out  his  hands  and  folded  his  arms,  obtruded  his 
chin  and  bobbed  about  his  head  —  and  at  last,  I  am  happy  to 
say,  recovered  his  spoon.  If  I  had  had  a  solid  little  silver  one  I 
would  have  presented  it  to  him  as  a  testimonial  to  a  perfect, 
though  as  yet  unconscious,  artist. 

[352] 


SIENA  EARLY  AND  LATE 

My  actual  tribute  to  him,  however,  has  diverted  me  from 
what  I  had  in  mind  —  a  much  weightier  matter  —  the  great 
private  palaces  which  are  the  massive  majestic  syllables,  sen 
tences,  periods,  of  the  strange  message  the  place  addresses  to 
us.  They  are  extraordinarily  spacious  and  numerous,  and  one 
wonders  what  part  they  can  play  in  the  meagre  economy  of  the 
actual  city.  The  Siena  of  to-day  is  a  mere  shrunken  semblance 
of  the  rabid  little  republic  which  in  the  thirteenth  century  waged 
triumphant  war  with  Florence,  cultivated  the  arts  with  splen 
dour,  planned  a  cathedral  (though  it  had  ultimately  to  curtail 
the  design)  of  proportions  almost  unequalled,  and  contained  a 
population  of  two  hundred  thousand  souls.  Many  of  these  dusky 
piles  still  bear  the  names  of  the  old  mediaeval  magnates  the  vague 
mild  occupancy  of  whose  descendants  has  the  effect  of  armour 
of  proof  worn  over  "pot"  hats  and  tweed  jackets  and  trousers. 
Half-a-dozen  of  them  are  as  high  as  the  Strozzi  and  Riccardi 
palaces  in  Florence ;  they  could  n't  well  be  higher.  The  very 
essence  of  the  romantic  and  the  scenic  is  in  the  way  these  colossal 
dwellings  are  packed  together  in  their  steep  streets,  in  the  depths 
of  their  little  enclosed,  agglomerated  city.  When  we,  in  our  day 
and  country,  raise  a  structure  of  half  the  mass  and  dignity,  we 
leave  a  great  space  about  it  in  the  manner  of  a  pause  after  a  showy 
speech.  But  when  a  Sienese  countess,  as  things  are  here,  is  doing 
her  hair  near  the  window,  she  is  a  wonderfully  near  neighbour 
to  the  cavalier  opposite,  who  is  being  shaved  by  his  valet.  Pos 
sibly  the  countess  does  n't  object  to  a  certain  chosen  publicity 
at  her  toilet;  what  does  an  Italian  gentleman  assure  me  but  that 

[  353] 


ITALIAN  HOURS 

the  aristocracy  make  very  free  with  each  other  ?  Some  of  the 
palaces  are  shown,  but  only  when  the  occupants  are  at  home, 
and  now  they  are  in  villeggiatura.  Their  villeggiatura  lasts  eight 
months  of  the  year,  the  waiter  at  the  inn  informs  me,  and  they 
spend  little  more  than  the  carnival  in  the  city.  The  gossip  of  an 
inn-waiter  ought  perhaps  to  be  beneath  the  dignity  of  even  such 
thin  history  as  this;  but  I  confess  that  when,  as  a  story-seeker 
always  and  ever,  I  have  come  in  from  my  strolls  with  an  irritated 
sense  of  the  dumbness  of  stones  and  mortar,  it  has  been  to  listen 
with  avidity,  over  my  dinner,  to  the  proffered  confidences  of 
the  worthy  man  who  stands  by  with  a  napkin.  His  talk  is  really 
very  fine,  and  he  prides  himself  greatly  on  his  cultivated  tone, 
to  which  he  calls  my  attention.  He  has  very  little  good  to  say 
about  the  Sienese  nobility.  They  are  "proprio  d'  origine  egoista" 
—  whatever  that  may  be  —  and  there  are  many  who  can't  write 
their  names.  This  may  be  calumny;  but  I  doubt  whether  the 
most  blameless  of  them  all  could  have  spoken  -more  delicately  of 
a  lady  of  peculiar  personal  appearance  who  had  been  dining  near 
me.  "She's  too  fat,"  I  grossly  said  on  her  leaving  the  room.  The 
waiter  shook  his  head  with  a  little  sniff:  "E  troppo  materiale." 
This  lady  and  her  companion  were  the  party  whom,  thinking  I 
might  relish  a  little  company  —  I  had  been  dining  alone  for  a 
week  —  he  gleefully  announced  to  me  as  newly  arrived  Ameri 
cans.  They  were  Americans,  I  found,  who  wore,  pinned  to  their 
heads  in  permanence,  the  black  lace  veil  or  mantilla,  conveyed 
their  beans  to  their  mouth  with  a  knife,  and  spoke  a  strange  rau 
cous  Spanish.  They  were  in  fine  compatriots  from  Montevideo. 

[354] 


Qir^ib^y^ 

•: 


m 
'i 


r  V 


Till-:     KKU     1'AI.ACK,     SIKNA. 


SIENA  EARLY  AND   LATE 

The  genius  of  old  Siena,  however,  would  make  little  of  any 
stress  of  such  distinctions ;  one  representative  of  a  far-off  social 
platitude  being  about  as  much  in  order  as  another  as  he  stands 
before  the  great  loggia  of  the  Casino  di  Nobili,  the  club  of  the 
best  society.  The  nobility,  which  is  very  numerous  and  very 
rich,  is  still,  says  the  apparently  competent  native  I  began  by 
quoting,  perfectly  feudal  and  uplifted  and  separate.  Morally 
and  intellectually,  behind  the  walls  of  its  palaces,  the  fourteenth 
century,  it's  thrilling  to  think,  has  n't  ceased  to  hang  on.  There 
is  no  bourgeoisie  to  speak  of;  immediately  after  the  aristocracy 
come  the  poor  people,  who  are  very  poor  indeed.  My  friend's  ac 
count  of  these  matters  made  me  wish  more  than  ever,  as  a  lover 
of  the  preserved  social  specimen,  of  type  at  almost  any  price,  that 
one  were  n't,  a  helpless  victim  of  the  historic  sense,  reduced  sim 
ply  to  staring  at  black  stones  and  peeping  up  stately  staircases ; 
and  that  when  one  had  examined  the  street-face  of  the  palace, 
Murray  in  hand,  one  might  walk  up  to  the  great  drawing-room, 
make  one's  bow  to  the  master  and  mistress,  the  old  abbe  and 
the  young  count,  and  invite  them  to  favour  one  with  a  sketch 
of  their  social  philosophy  or  a  few  first-hand  family  anecdotes. 

The  dusky  labyrinth  of  the  streets,  we  must  in  default  of  such 
initiations  content  ourselves  with  noting,  is  interrupted  by  two 
great  candid  spaces :  the  fan-shaped  piazza,  of  which  I  just  now 
said  a  word,  and  the  smaller  square  in  which  the  cathedral  erects 
its  walls  of  many-coloured  marble.  Of  course  since  paying  the 
great  piazza  my  compliments  by  moonlight  I  have  strolled  through 
it  often  at  sunnier  and  shadier  hours.  The  market  is  held  there, 

[355] 


ITALIAN  HOURS 

and  wherever  Italians  buy  and  sell,  wherever  they  count  and 
chaffer  —  as  indeed  you  hear  them  do  right  and  left,  at  almost 
any  moment,  as  you  take  your  way  among  them  —  the  pulse 
of  life  beats  fast.  It  has  been  doing  so  on  the  spot  just  named, 
I  suppose,  for  the  last  five  hundred  years,  and  during  that  time 
the  cost  of  eggs  and  earthen  pots  has  been  gradually  but  inex 
orably  increasing.  The  buyers  nevertheless  wrestle  over  their 
purchases  as  lustily  as  so  many  fourteenth-century  burghers  sud 
denly  waking  up  in  horror  to  current  prices.  You  have  but  to 
walk  aside,  however,  into  the  Palazzo  Pubblico  really  to  feel 
yourself  a  thrifty  old  medievalist.  The  state  affairs  of  the  Re 
public  were  formerly  transacted  here,  but  it  now  gives  shelter  to 
modern  law-courts  and  other  prosy  business.  I  was  marched 
through  a  number  of  vaulted  halls  and  chambers,  which,  in  the 
intervals  of  the  administrative  sessions  held  in  them,  are  peopled 
only  by  the  great  mouldering  archaic  frescoes  —  anything  but 
inanimate  these  even  in  their  present  ruin  —  that  cover  the  walls 
and  ceiling.  The  chief  painters  of  the  Sienese  school  lent  a  hand 
in  producing  the  works  I  name,  and  you  may  complete  there 
the  connoisseurship  in  which,  possibly,  you  will  have  embarked 
at  the  Academy.  I  say  "possibly"  to  be  very  judicial,  my  own 
observation  having  led  me  no  great  length.  I  have  rather  than 
otherwise  cherished  the  thought  that  the  Sienese  school  suffers 
one's  eagerness  peacefully  to  slumber  —  benignantly  abstains  in 
fact  from  whipping  up  a  languid  curiosity  and  a  tepid  faith. 
"A  formidable  rival  to  the  Florentine,"  says  some  book  —  I 
forget  which  —  into  which  I  recently  glanced.  Not  a  bit  of  it 

[356] 


SIENA  EARLY  AND  LATE 

thereupon  boldly  say  I ;  the  Florentines  may  rest  on  their  laurels 
and  the  lounger  on  his  lounge.  The  early  painters  of  the  two 
groups  have  indeed  much  in  common;  but  the  Florentines  had 
the  good  fortune  to  see  their  efforts  gathered  up  and  applied  by 
a  few  pre-eminent  spirits,  such  as  never  came  to  the  rescue  of  the 
groping  Sienese.  Fra  Angelico  and  Ghirlandaio  said  all  their 
feebler  confreres  dreamt  of  and  a  great  deal  more  beside,  but  the 
inspiration  of  Simone  Memmi  and  Ambrogio  Lorenzetti  and  Sano 
di  Pietro  has  a  painful  air  of  never  efflorescing  into  a  maximum. 
Sodoma  and  Beccafumi  are  to  my  taste  a  rather  abortive  maxi 
mum.  But  one  should  speak  of  them  all  gently  —  and  I  do,  from 
my  soul ;  for  their  labour,  by  their  lights,  has  wrought  a  precious 
heritage  of  still-living  colour  and  rich  figure-peopled  shadow  for 
the  echoing  chambers  of  their  old  civic  fortress.  The  faded  fres 
coes  cover  the  walls  like  quaintly-storied  tapestries;  in  one  way 
or  another  they  cast  their  spell.  If  one  owes  a  large  debt  of  plea 
sure  to  pictorial  art  one  comes  to  think  tenderly  and  easily  of 
its  whole  evolution,  as  of  the  conscious  experience  of  a  single 
mysterious,  striving  spirit,  and  one  shrinks  from  saying  rude 
things  about  any  particular  phase  of  it,  just  as  one  would  from 
referring  without  precautions  to  some  error  or  lapse  in  the  life 
of  a  person  one  esteemed.  You  don't  care  to  remind  a  grizzled 
veteran  of  his  defeats,  and  why  should  we  linger  in  Siena  to  talk 
about  Beccafumi  ?  I  by  no  means  go  so  far  as  to  say,  with  an 
amateur  with  whom  I  have  just  been  discussing  the  matter,  that 
"Sodoma  is  a  precious  poor  painter  and  Beccafumi  no  painter 
at  all";  but,  opportunity  being  limited,  I  am  willing  to  let  the 

[357] 


ITALIAN  HOURS 

remark  about  Beccafumi  pass  for  true.  With  regard  to  Sodoma, 
I  remember  seeing  four  years  ago  in  the  choir  of  the  Cathedral 
of  Pisa  a  certain  small  dusky  specimen  of  the  painter  —  an  Abra 
ham  and  Isaac,  if  I  am  not  mistaken  —  which  was  charged  with 
a  gloomy  grace.  One  rarely  meets  him  in  general  collections, 
and  I  had  never  done  so  till  the  other  day.  He  was  not  prolific, 
apparently ;  he  had  however  his  own  elegance,  and  his  rarity  is 
a  part  of  it. 

Here  in  Siena  are  a  couple  of  dozen  scattered  frescoes  and 
three  or  four  canvases;  his  masterpiece,  among  others,  an  har 
monious  Descent  from  the  Cross.  I  would  n't  give  a  fig  for  the 
equilibrium  of  the  figures  or  the  ladders ;  but  while  it  lasts  the 
scene  is  all  intensely  solemn  and  graceful  and  sweet  —  too  sweet 
for  so  bitter  a  subject.  Sodoma's  women  are  strangely  sweet; 
an  imaginative  sense  of  morbid  appealing  attitude  —  as  notably 
in  the  sentimental,  the  pathetic,  but  the  none  the  less  pleasant, 
"Swooning  of  St.  Catherine,"  the  great  Sienese  heroine,  at  San 
Domenico  —  seems  to  me  the  author's  finest  accomplishment. 
His  frescoes  have  all  the  same  almost  appealing  evasion  of  diffi 
culty,  and  a  kind  of  mild  melancholy  which  I  am  inclined  to 
think  the  sincerest  part  of  them,  for  it  strikes  me  as  practically 
the  artist's  depressed  suspicion  of  his  own  want  of  force.  Once 
he  determined,  however,  that  if  he  could  n't  be  strong  he  would 
make  capital  of  his  weakness,  and  painted  the  Christ  bound  to 
the  Column,  of  the  Academy.  Here  he  got  much  nearer  and  I 
have  no  doubt  mixed  his  colours  with  his  tears;  but  the  result 
can't  be  better  described  than  by  saying  that  it  is,  pictorially, 

[358  ] 


SAN     DOM  IN  ICO,     SIKNA. 


SIENA  EARLY  AND  LATE 

the  first  of  the  modern  Christs.  Unfortunately  it  has  n't  been  the 
last. 

The  main  strength  of  Sienese  art  went  possibly  into  the  erec 
tion  of  the  Cathedral,  and  yet  even  here  the  strength  is  not  of  the 
greatest  strain.  If,  however,  there  are  more  interesting  temples 
in  Italy,  there  are  few  more  richly  and  variously  scenic  and  splen 
did,  the  comparative  meagreness  of  the  architectural  idea  being 
overlaid  by  a  marvellous  wealth  of  ingenious  detail.  Opposite 
the  church  —  with  the  dull  old  archbishop's  palace  on  one  side 
and  a  dismantled  residence  of  the  late  Grand  Duke  of  Tuscany 
on  the  other  —  is  an  ancient  hospital  with  a  big  stone  bench  run 
ning  all  along  its  front.  Here  I  have  sat  a  while  every  morning 
for  a  week,  like  a  philosophic  convalescent,  watching  the  florid 
facade  of  the  cathedral  glitter  against  the  deep  blue  sky.  It  has 
been  lavishly  restored  of  late  years,  and  the  fresh  white  marble 
of  the  densely  clustered  pinnacles  and  statues  and  beasts  and 
flowers  flashes  in  the  sunshine  like  a  mosaic  of  jewels.  There 
is  more  of  this  goldsmith's  work  in  stone  than  I  can  remember 
or  describe ;  it  is  piled  up  over  three  great  doors  with  immense 
margins  of  exquisite  decorative  sculpture  —  still  in  the  ancient 
cream-coloured  marble  —  and  beneath  three  sharp  pediments 
embossed  with  images  relieved  against  red  marble  and  tipped 
with  golden  mosaics.  It  is  in  the  highest  degree  fantastic  and 
luxuriant  —  it  is  on  the  whole  very  lovely.  As  a  triumph  of  the 
many-hued  it  prepares  you  for  the  interior,  where  the  same 
parti-coloured  splendour  is  endlessly  at  play  —  a  confident  com 
plication  of  harmonies,  and  contrasts  and  of  the  minor  structural 

[359] 


ITALIAN  HOURS 

refinements  and  braveries.  The  internal  surface  is  mainly  wrought 
in  alternate  courses  of  black  and  white  marble ;  but  as  the  lat 
ter  has  been  dimmed  by  the  centuries  to  a  fine  mild  brown 
the  place  is  all  a  concert  of  relieved  and  dispersed  glooms.  Save 
for  Pinturicchio's  brilliant  frescoes  in  the  Sacristy  there  are  no 
pictures  to  speak  of;  but  the  pavement  is  covered  with  many 
elaborate  designs  in  black  and  white  mosaic  after  cartoons  by 
Beccafumi.  The  patient  skill  of  these  compositions  makes  them 
a  rare  piece  of  decoration ;  yet  even  here  the  friend  whom  I  lately 
quoted  rejects  this  over-ripe  fruit  of  the  Sienese  school.  The  de 
signs  are  nonsensical,  he  declares,  and  all  his  admiration  is  for 
the  cunning  artisans  who  have  imitated  the  hatchings  and  shad- 
ings  and  hair-strokes  of  the  pencil  by  the  finest  curves  of  in 
serted  black  stone.  But  the  true  romance  of  handiwork  at  Siena 
is  to  be  seen  in  the  wondrous  stalls  of  the  choir,  under  the  coloured 
light  of  the  great  wheel-window.  Wood-carving  has  ever  been  a 
cherished  craft  of  the  place,  and  the  best  masters  of  the  art  dur 
ing  the  fifteenth  century  lavished  themselves  on  this  prodigious 
task.  It  is  the  frost-work  on  one's  window-panes  interpreted  in 
polished  oak.  It  would  be  hard  to  find,  doubtless,  a  more  mov 
ing  illustration  of  the  peculiar  patience,  the  sacred  candour,  of 
the  great  time.  Into  such  artistry  as  this  the  author  seems  to  put 
more  of  his  personal  substance  than  into  any  other;  he  has  to 
wrestle  not  only  with  his  subject,  but  with  his  material.  He  is 
richly  fortunate  when  his  subject  is  charming  —  when  his  de 
vices,  inventions  and  fantasies  spring  lightly  to  his  hand ;  for  in 
the  material  itself,  after  age  and  use  have  ripened  and  polished 

[360] 


SIENA   EARLY  AND  LATE 

and  darkened  it  to  the  richness  of  ebony  and  to  a  greater  warmth 
there  is  something  surpassingly  delectable  and  venerable.  Wan 
der  behind  the  altar  at  Siena  when  the  chanting  is  over  and  the 
incense  has  faded,  and  look  well  at  the  stalls  of  the  Barili. 

1873- 


II 


I  LEAVE  the  impression  noted  in  the  foregoing  pages  to  tell  its 
own  small  story,  but  have  it  on  my  conscience  to  wonder,  in  this 
connection,  quite  candidly  and  publicly  and  by  way  of  due  pen 
ance,  at  the  scantness  of  such  first-fruits  of  my  sensibility.  I  was 
to  see  Siena  repeatedly  in  the  years  to  follow,  I  was  to  know  her 
better,  and  I  would  say  that  I  was  to  do  her  an  ampler  justice 
did  n't  that  remark  seem  to  reflect  a  little  on  my  earlier  poor  judg 
ment.  This  judgment  strikes  me  to-day  as  having  fallen  short 
—  true  as  it  may  be  that  I  find  ever  a  value,  or  at  least  an  inter 
est,  even  in  the  moods  and  humours  and  lapses  of  any  brooding, 
musing  or  fantasticating  observer  to  whom  the  finer  sense  of 
things  is  on  the  whole  not  closed.  If  he  has  on  a  given  occasion 
nodded  or  stumbled  or  strayed,  this  fact  by  itself  speaks  to  me  of 
him  —  speaks  to  me,  that  is,  of  his  faculty  and  his  idiosyncra 
sies,  and  I  care  nothing  for  the  application  of  his  faculty  unless 
it  be,  first  of  all,  in  itself  interesting.  Which  may  serve  as  my 
reply  to  any  objection  here  breaking  out — on  the  ground  that 
if  a  spectator's  languors  are  evidence,  of  a  sort,  about  that  person 
age,  they  are  scarce  evident  about  the  case  before  him,  at  least 

[361  ] 


ITALIAN  HOURS 

if  the  case  be  important.  I  let  my  perhaps  rather  weak  expres 
sion  of  the  sense  of  Siena  stand,  at  any  rate  —  for  the  sake  of 
what  I  myself  read  into  it ;  but  I  should  like  to  amplify  it  by  other 
memories,  and  would  do  so  eagerly  if  I  might  here  enjoy  the 
space.  The  difficulty  for  these  rectifications  is  that  if  the  early 
vision  has  failed  of  competence  or  of  full  felicity,  if  initiation 
has  thus  been  slow,  so,  with  renewals  and  extensions,  so,  with 
the  larger  experience,  one  hindrance  is  exchanged  for  another. 
There  is  quite  such  a  possibility  as  having  lived  into  a  relation 
too  much  to  be  able  to  make  a  statement  of  it. 

I  remember  on  one  occasion  arriving  very  late  of  a  summer 
night,  after  an  almost  unbroken  run  from  London,  and  the  note 
of  that  approach  —  I  was  the  only  person  alighting  at  the  station 
below  the  great  hill  of  the  little  fortress  city,  under  whose  at 
once  frowning  and  gaping  gate  I  must  have  passed,  in  the  warm 
darkness  and  the  absolute  stillness,  very  much  after  the  felt 
fashion  of  a  person  of  importance  about  to  be  enormously  in 
carcerated  —  gives  me,  for  preservation  thus  belated,  the  pitch, 
as  I  may  call  it,  at  various  times,  though  always  at  one  season, 
of  an  almost  systematised  aesthetic  use  of  the  place.  It  was  n't 
to  be  denied  that  the  immensely  better  "accommodations"  insti 
tuted  by  the  multiplying,  though  alas  more  bustling,  years  had 
to  be  recognised  as  supplying  a  basis,  comparatively  prosaic  if 
one  would,  to  that  luxury.  No  sooner  have  I  written  which 
words,  however,  than  I  find  myself  adding  that  one  "would  n't," 
that  one  does  n't  —  does  n't,  that  is,  consent  now  to  regard  the 
then  "new"  hotel  (pretty  old  indeed  by  this  time)  as  anything 

[362  ] 


SIENA  EARLY  AND   LATE 

but  an  aid  to  a  free  play  of  perception.  The  strong  and  rank  old 
Arme  d'  Inghilterra,  in  the  darker  street,  has  passed  away;  but 
its  ancient  rival  the  Aquila  Nera  put  forth  claims  to  modernisa 
tion,  and  the  Grand  Hotel,  the  still  fresher  flower  of  modernity 
near  the  gate  by  which  you  enter  from  the  station,  takes  on  to 
my  present  remembrance  a  mellowness  as  of  all  sorts  of  comfort, 
cleanliness  and  kindness.  The  particular  facts,  those  of  the  visit 
I  began  here  by  alluding  to  and  those  of  still  others,  at  all  events, 
inveterately  made  in  June  or  early  in  July,  enter  together  in  a  fu 
sion  as  of  hot  golden-brown  objects  seen  through  the  practicable 
crevices  of  shutters  drawn  upon  high,  cool,  darkened  rooms  where 
the  scheme  of  the  scene  involved  longish  days  of  quiet  work,  with 
late  afternoon  emergence  and  contemplation  waiting  on  the  bet 
ter  or  the  worse  conscience.  I  thus  associate  the  compact  world  of 
the  admirable  hill-top,  the  world  of  a  predominant  golden-brown, 
with  a  general  invocation  of  sensibility  and  fancy,  and  think  of 
myself  as  going  forth  into  the  lingering  light  of  summer  even 
ings  all  attuned  to  intensity  of  the  idea  of  compositional  beauty, 
or  in  other  words,  freely  speaking,  to  the  question  of  colour,  to 
intensity  of  picture.  To  communicate  with  Siena  in  this  charming 
way  was  thus,  I  admit,  to  have  no  great  margin  for  the  prosecu 
tion  of  inquiries,  but  I  am  not  sure  that  it  was  n't,  little  by  little, 
to  feel  the  whole  combination  of  elements  better  than  by  a  more 
exemplary  method,  and  this  from  beginning  to  end  of  the  scale. 

More  of  the  elements  indeed,  for  memory,  hang  about  the 
days  that  were  ushered  in  by  that  straight  flight  from  the  north 
than  about  any  other  series  —  if  partly,  doubtless,  but  because 

[363] 


ITALIAN  HOURS 

of  my  having  then  stayed  longest.  I  specify  it  at  all  events  for 
fond  reminiscence  as  the  year,  the  only  year,  at  which  I  was 
present  at  the  Palio,  the  earlier  one,  the  series  of  furious  horse 
races  between  elected  representatives  of  different  quarters  of  the 
town  taking  place  toward  the  end  of  June,  as  the  second  and  still 
more  characteristic  exhibition  of  the  same  sort  is  appointed  to 
the  month  of  August;  a  spectacle  that  I  am  far  from  speaking  of 
as  the  finest  flower  of  my  old  and  perhaps  even  a  little  faded 
cluster  of  impressions,  but  which  smudges  that  special  sojourn 
as  with  the  big  thumb-mark  of  a  slightly  soiled  and  decidedly 
ensanguined  hand.  For  really,  after  all,  the  great  loud  gaudy 
romp  or  heated  frolic,  simulating  ferocity  if  not  achieving  it,  that 
is  the  annual  pride  of  the  town,  was  not  intrinsically,  to  my  view, 
extraordinarily  impressive  —  in  spite  of  its  bristling  with  all  due 
testimony  to  the  passionate  Italian  clutch  of  any  pretext  for 
costume  and  attitude  and  utterance,  for  mumming  and  mas 
querading  and  raucously  representing;  the  vast  cheap  vividness 
rather  somehow  refines  itself,  and  the  swarm  and  hubbub  of  the 
immense  square  melt,  to  the  uplifted  sense  of  a  very  high-placed 
balcony  of  the  overhanging  Chigi  palace,  where  everything  was 
superseded  but  the  intenser  passage,  across  the  ages,  of  the  great 
Renaissance  tradition  of  architecture  and  the  infinite  sweetness 
of  the  waning  golden  day.  The  Palio,  indubitably,  was  criard  — 
and  the  more  so  for  quite  monopolising,  at  Siena,  the  note  of 
crudity;  and  much  of  it  demanded  doubtless  of  one's  patience 
a  due  respect  for  the  long  local  continuity  of  such  things ;  it  drops 
into  its  humoured  position,  however,  in  any  retrospective  com- 

[364] 


SIENA  EARLY  AND   LATE 

mand  of  the  many  brave  aspects  of  the  prodigious  place.  Not 
that  I  am  pretending  here,  even  for  rectification,  to  take  these 
at  all  in  turn;  I  only  go  on  a  little  with  my  rueful  glance  at 
the  marked  gaps  left  in  my  original  report  of  sympathies  enter 
tained. 

I  bow  my  head  for  instance  to  the  mystery  of  my  not  hav 
ing  mentioned  that  the  coolest  and  freshest  flower  of  the  day 
was  ever  that  of  one's  constant  renewal  of  a  charmed  homage 
to  Pinturicchio,  coolest  and  freshest  and  signally  youngest  and 
most  matutinal  (as  distinguished  from  merely  primitive  or  cre 
puscular)  of  painters,  in  the  library  or  sacristy  of  the  Cathedral. 
Did  I  always  find  time  before  work  to  spend  half-an-hour  of 
immersion,  under  that  splendid  roof,  in  the  clearest  and  ten- 
derest,  the  very  cleanest  and  "straightest,"  as  it  masters  our 
envious  credulity,  of  all  storied  fresco-worlds  ?  This  wondrous 
apartment,  a  monument  in  itself  to  the  ancient  pride  and  power 
of  the  Church,  and  which  contains  an  unsurpassed  treasure  of 
gloriously  illuminated  missals,  psalters  and  other  vast  parchment 
folios,  almost  each  of  whose  successive  leaves  gives  the  im 
pression  of  rubies,  sapphires  and  emeralds  set  in  gold  and  prac 
tically  embedded  in  the  page,  offers  thus  to  view,  after  a  fashion 
splendidly  sustained,  a  pictorial  record  of  the  career  of  Pope 
Pius  II,  ^Eneas  Sylvius  of  the  Siena  Piccolomini  (who  gave  him 
for  an  immediate  successor  a  second  of  their  name),  most  pro 
fanely  literary  of  Pontiffs  and  last  of  would-be  Crusaders,  whose 
adventures  and  achievements  under  Pinturicchio's  brush  smooth 
themselves  out  for  us  very  much  to  the  tune  of  the  "  stones" 

[365] 


ITALIAN  HOURS 

told  by  some  fine  old  man  of  the  world,  at  the  restful  end  of 
his  life,  to  the  cluster  of  his  grandchildren.  The  end  of  ^Eneas 
Sylvius  was  not  restful;  he  died  at  Ancona  in  troublous  times, 
preaching  war,  and  attempting  to  make  it,  against  the  then  ter 
rific  Turk;  but  over  no  great  worldly  personal  legend,  among  those 
of  men  of  arduous  affairs,  arches  a  fairer,  lighter  or  more  pacific 
memorial  vault  than  the  shining  Libreria  of  Siena.  I  seem  to 
remember  having  it  and  its  unfrequented  enclosing  precinct  so 
often  all  to  myself  that  I  must  indeed  mostly  have  resorted  to  it 
for  a  prompt  benediction  on  the  day.  Like  no  other  strong  solici 
tation,  among  artistic  appeals  to  which  one  may  compare  it  up 
and  down  the  whole  wonderful  country,  is  the  felt  neighbour 
ing  presence  of  the  overwrought  Cathedral  in  its  little  proud 
possessive  town :  you  may  so  often  feel  by  the  week  at  a  time 
that  it  stands  there  really  for  your  own  personal  enjoyment,  your 
romantic  convenience,  your  small  wanton  aesthetic  use.  In  such 
a  light  shines  for  me,  at  all  events,  under  such  an  accumulation 
and  complication  of  tone  flushes  and  darkens  and  richly  recedes 
for  me,  across  the  years,  the  treasure-house  of  many-coloured 
marbles  in  the  untrodden,  the  drowsy,  empty  Sienese  square. 
One  could  positively  do,  in  the  free  exercise  of  any  responsible 
fancy  or  luxurious  taste,  what  one  would  with  it. 

But  that  proposition  holds  true,  after  all,  for  almost  any  mild 
pastime  of  the  incurable  student  of  loose  meanings  and  stray 
relics  and  odd  references  and  dim  analogies  in  an  Italian  hill-city 
bronzed  and  seasoned  by  the  ages.  I  ought  perhaps,  for  justifi 
cation  of  the  right  to  talk,  to  have  plunged  into  the  Siena  archives 

[366  ] 


SIENA   EARLY  AND  LATE 

of  which,  on  one  occasion,  a  kindly  custodian  gave  me,  in  rather 
dusty  and  stuffy  conditions,  as  the  incident  vaguely  comes  back 
to  me,  a  glimpse  that  was  like  a  moment's  stand  at  the  mouth 
of  a  deep,  dark  mine.  I  did  n't  descend  into  the  pit;  I  did,  instead 
of  this,  a  much  idler  and  easier  thing :  I  simply  went  every  after 
noon,  my  stint  of  work  over,  I  like  to  recall,  for  a  musing  stroll 
upon  the  Lizza  —  the  Lizza  which  had  its  own  unpretentious 
but  quite  insidious  art  of  meeting  the  lover  of  old  stories  half 
way.  The  great  and  subtle  thing,  if  you  are  not  a  strenuous  spe 
cialist,  in  places  of  a  heavily  charged  historic  consciousness,  is 
to  profit  by  the  sense  of  that  consciousness  —  or  in  other  words 
to  cultivate  a  relation  with  the  oracle  —  after  the  fashion  that 
suits  yourself;  so  that  if  the  general  after-taste  of  experience, 
experience  at  large,  the  fine  distilled  essence  of  the  matter,  seems 
to  breathe,  in  such  a  case,  from  the  very  stones  and  to  make  a 
thick  strong  liquor  of  the  very  air,  you  may  thus  gather  as  you 
pass  what  is  most  to  your  purpose;  which  is  more  the  inde 
structible  mixture  of  lived  things,  with  its  concentrated  linger 
ing  odour,  than  any  interminable  list  of  numbered  chapters  and 
verses.  Chapters  and  verses,  literally  scanned,  refuse  coincidence, 
mostly,  with  the  divisional  proprieties  of  your  own  pile  of  manu 
script  —  which  is  but  another  way  of  saying,  in  short,  that  if  the 
Lizza  is  a  mere  fortified  promontory  of  the  great  Sienese  hill, 
serving  at  once  as  a  stronghold  for  the  present  military  garri 
son  and  as  a  planted  and  benched  and  band-standed  walk  and 
recreation-ground  for  the  citizens,  so  I  could  never,  toward  close 
of  day,  either  have  enough  of  it  or  yet  feel  the  vaguest  saunterings 

[367 1 


ITALIAN   HOURS 

there  to  be  vain.  They  were  vague  with  the  qualification  always 
of  that  finer  massing,  as  one  wandered  off,  of  the  bronzed  and 
seasoned  element,  the  huge  rock  pedestal,  the  bravery  of  walls 
and  gates  and  towers  and  palaces  and  loudly  asserted  dominion; 
and  then  of  that  pervaded  or  mildly  infested  air  in  which  one  feels 
the  experience  of  the  ages,  of  which  I  just  spoke,  to  be  exquisitely 
in  solution ;  and  lastly  of  the  wide,  strange,  sad,  beautiful  horizon, 
a  rim  of  far  mountains  that  always  pictured,  for  the  leaner  on  old 
rubbed  and  smoothed  parapets  at  the  sunset  hour,  a  country  not 
exactly  blighted  or  deserted,  but  that  had  had  its  life,  on  an  im 
mense  scale,  and  had  gone,  with  all  its  memories  and  relics,  into 
rather  austere,  in  fact  into  almost  grim  and  misanthropic,  retire 
ment.  This  was  a  manner  and  a  mood,  at  any  rate,  in  all  the 
land,  that  favoured  in  the  late  afternoons  the  divinest  landscape 
blues  and  purples  —  not  to  speak  of  its  favouring  still  more  my 
practical  contention  that  the  whole  guarded  headland  in  ques 
tion,  with  the  immense  ramparts  of  golden  brown  and  red  that 
dropped  into  vineyards  and  orchards  and  cornfields  and  all  the 
rustic  elegance  of  the  Tuscan  podere,  was  knitting  for  me  a  chain 
of  unforgettable  hours;  to  the  justice  of  which  claim  let  these 
divagations  testify. 

It  was  n't,  however,  that  one  might  n't  without  disloyalty  to 
that  scheme  of  profit  seek  impressions  further  afield  —  though 
indeed  I  may  best  say  of  such  a  matter  as  the  long  pilgrimage 
to  the  pictured  convent  of  Monte  Oliveto  that  it  but  played  on 
the  same  fine  chords  as  the  overhanging,  the  far-gazing  Lizza. 
What  it  came  to  was  that  one  simply  put  to  the  friendly  test,  as 

[  368] 


SIENA  EARLY  AND  LATE 

it  were,  the  mood  and  manner  of  the  country.  This  remembrance 
is  precious,  but  the  demonstration  of  that  sense  as  of  a  great 
heaving  region  stilled  by  some  final  shock  and  returning  thought 
fully,  in  fact  tragically,  on  itself,  could  n't  have  been  more  pointed. 
The  long-drawn  rural  road  I  refer  to,  stretching  over  hill  and 
dale  and  to  which  I  devoted  the  whole  of  the  longest  day  of  the 
year  —  I  was  in  a  small  single-horse  conveyance,  of  which  I  had 
already  made  appreciative  use,  and  with  a  driver  as  disposed 
as  myself  ever  to  sacrifice  speed  to  contemplation  —  is  doubtless 
familiar  now  with  the  rush  of  the  motor-car;  the  thought  of  whose 
free  dealings  with  the  solitude  of  Monte  Oliveto  makes  me  a  little 
ruefully  reconsider,  I  confess,  the  spirit  in  which  I  have  else 
where  in  these  pages,  on  behalf  of  the  lust,  the  landscape  lust, 
of  the  eyes,  acknowledged  our  general  increasing  debt  to  that 
vehicle.  For  that  we  met  nothing  whatever,  as  I  seem  at  this  dis 
tance  of  time  to  recall,  while  we  gently  trotted  and  trotted  through 
the  splendid  summer  hours  and  a  dry  desolation  that  yet  some 
how  smiled  and  smiled,  was  part  of  the  charm  and  the  intimacy 
of  the  whole  impression  —  the  impression  that  culminated  at  last, 
before  the  great  cloistered  square,'  lonely,  bleak  and  stricken,  in 
the  almost  aching  vision,  more  frequent  in  the  Italy  of  to-day  than 
anywhere  in  the  world,  of  the  uncalculated  waste  of  a  myriad 
forms  of  piety,  forces  of  labour,  beautiful  fruits  of  genius.  How 
ever,  one  gaped  above  all  things  for  the  impression,  and  what  one 
mainly  asked  was  that  it  should  be  strong  of  its  kind.  That  was 
the  case,  I  think  I  could  n't  but  feel,  at  every  moment  of  the  couple 
of  hours  I  spent  in  the  vast,  cold,  empty  shell,  out  of  which  the 

[369] 


ITALIAN  HOURS 

Benedictine  brotherhood  sheltered  there  for  ages  had  lately  been 
turned  by  the  strong  arm  of  a  secular  State.  There  was  but  one 
good  brother  left,  a  very  lean  and  tough  survivor,  a  dusky,  elderly, 
friendly  Abbate,  of  an  indescribable  type  and  a  perfect  manner, 
of  whom  I  think  I  felt  immediately  thereafter  that  I  should  have 
liked  to  say  much,  but  as  to  whom  I  must  have  yielded  to  the 
fact  that  ingenious  and  vivid  commemoration  was  even  then  in 
store  for  him.  Literary  portraiture  had  marked  him  for  its  own, 
and  in  the  short  story  of  Un  Saint,  one  of  the  most  finished  of 
contemporary  French  nouvelles,  the  art  and  the  sympathy  of 
Monsieur  Paul  Bourget  preserve  his  interesting  image.  He  figures 
in  the  beautiful  tale,  the  Abbate  of  the  desolate  cloister  and  of 
those  comparatively  quiet  years,  as  a  clean,  clear  type  of  sainthood ; 
a  circumstance  this  in  itself  to  cause  a  fond  analyst  of  other  than 
"Latin"  race  (model  and  painter  in  this  case  having  their  Latin- 
ism  so  strongly  in  common)  almost  endlessly  to  meditate.  Oh, 
the  unutterable  differences  in  any  scheme  or  estimate  of  physiogno 
mic  values,  in  any  range  of  sensibility  to  expressional  association, 
among  observers  of  different,  of  inevitably  more  or  less  opposed, 
traditional  and  "racial "  points  of  view !  One  had  heard  convinced 
Latins  —  or  at  least  I  had !  —  speak  of  situations  of  trust  and 
intimacy  in  which  they  could  n't  have  endured  near  them  a  Pro 
testant  or,  as  who  should  say  for  instance,  an  Anglo-Saxon ;  but 
I  was  to  remember  my  own  private  attempt  to  measure  such  a 
change  of  sensibility  as  might  have  permitted  the  prolonged  close 
approach  of  the  dear  dingy,  half-starved,  very  possibly  all  heroic, 
and  quite  ideally  urbane  Abbate.  The  depth  upon  depth  of 

[370] 


SIENA  EARLY  AND  LATE 

things,  the  cloud  upon  cloud  of  associations,  on  one  side  and 
the  other,  that  would  have  had  to  change  first ! 

To  which  I  may  add  nevertheless  that  since  one  ever  supremely 
invoked  intensity  of  impression  and  abundance  of  character,  I 
feasted  my  fill  of  it  at  Monte  Oliveto,  and  that  for  that  matter 
this  would  have  constituted  my  sole  refreshment  in  the  vast  icy 
void  of  the  blighted  refectory  if  I  had  n't  bethought  myself  of 
bringing  with  me  a  scrap  of  food,  too  scantly  apportioned,  I 
recollect  —  very  scantly  indeed,  since  my  cocchiere  was  to  share 
with  me  —  by  my  purveyor  at  Siena.  Our  tragic  —  even  if  so 
1  tenderly  tragic  —  entertainer  had  nothing  to  give  us ;  but  the 
immemorial  cold  of  the  enormous  monastic  interior  in  which  we 
smilingly  fasted  would  doubtless  not  have  had  for  me  without 
that  such  a  wealth  of  reference.  I  was  to  have  "liked"  the  whole 
adventure,  so  I  must  somehow  have  liked  that ;  by  which  remark 
I  am  recalled  to  the  special  treasure  of  the  desecrated  temple, 
those  extraordinarily  strong  and  brave  frescoes  of  Luca  Signorelli 
and  Sodoma  that  adorn,  in  admirable  condition,  several  stretches 
of  cloister  wall.  These  creations  in  a  manner  took  care  of  them 
selves  ;  aided  by  the  blue  of  the  sky  above  the  cloister-court  they 
glowed,  they  insistently  lived ;  I  remember  the  frigid  prowl  through 
all  the  rest  of  the  bareness,  including  that  of  the  big  dishon 
oured  church  and  that  even  of  the  Abbate's  abysmally  resigned 
testimony  to  his  mere  human  and  personal  situation;  and  then, 
with  such  a  force  of  contrast  and  effect  of  relief,  the  great  shel 
tered  sun-flares  and  colour-patches  of  scenic  composition  and 
design  where  a  couple  of -hands  centuries  ago  turned  to  dust  had 


ITALIAN  HOURS 

so  wrought  the  defiant  miracle  of  life  and  beauty  that  the  effect 
is  of  a  garden  blooming  among  ruins.  Discredited  somehow, 
since  they  all  would,  the  destroyers  themselves,  the  ancient  piety, 
the  general  spirit  and  intention,  but  still  bright  and  assured  and 
sublime  —  practically,  enviably  immortal  —  the  other,  the  still 
subtler,  the  all  esthetic  good  faith. 

1909. 


THE  AUTUMN  IN  FLORENCE 


THE  AUTUMN  IN  FLORENCE 


|LORENCE  too  has  its  "season,"  not  less 
than  Rome,  and  I  have  been  rejoicing  for 
the  past  six  weeks  in  the  fact  that  this  com 
paratively  crowded  parenthesis  has  n't  yet 
been  opened.  Coming  here  in  the  first 
days  of  October  I  found  the  summer  still 
in  almost  unmenaced  possession,  and  ever 
since,  till  within  a  day  or  two,  the  weight 
of  its  hand  has  been  sensible.  Properly  enough,  as  the  city  of 
flowers,  Florence  mingles  the  elements  most  artfully  in  the  spring 
—  during  the  divine  crescendo  of  March  and  April,  the  weeks 
when  six  months  of  steady  shiver  have  still  not  shaken  New  York 
and  Boston  free  of  the  long  Polar  reach.  But  the  very  quality 
of  the  decline  of  the  year  as  we  at  present  here  feel  it  suits  pe 
culiarly  the  mood  in  which  an  undiscourageable  gatherer  of  the 
sense  of  things,  or  taster  at  least  of  "charm,"  moves  through  these 
many-memoried  streets  and  galleries  and  churches.  Old  things, 
old  places,  old  people,  or  at  least  old  races,  ever  strike  us  as  giv 
ing  out  their  secrets  most  freely  in  such  moist,  grey,  melancholy 
days  as  have  formed  the  complexion  of  the  past  fortnight.  With 
Christmas  arrives  the  opera,  the  only  opera  worth  speaking  of- 
which  indeed  often  means  in  Florence  the  only  opera  worth 

[375 1 


ITALIAN   HOURS 

talking  through ;  the  gaiety,  the  gossip,  the  reminders  in  fine  of 
the  cosmopolite  and  watering-place  character  to  which  the  city 
of  the  Medici  long  ago  began  to  bend  her  antique  temper.  Mean 
while  it  is  pleasant  enough  for  the  tasters  of  charm,  as  I  say, 
and  for  the  makers  of  invidious  distinctions,  that  the  Americans 
have  n't  all  arrived,  however  many  may  be  on  their  way,  and 
that  the  weather  has  a  monotonous  overcast  softness  in  which, 
apparently,  aimless  contemplation  grows  less  and  less  ashamed. 
There  is  no  crush  along  the  Cascine,  as  on  the  sunny  days  of 
winter,  and  the  Arno,  wandering  away  toward  the  mountains  in 
the  haze,  seems  as  shy  of  being  looked  at  as  a  good  picture  in 
a  bad  light.  No  light,  to  my  eyes,  nevertheless,  could  be  better 
than  this,  which  reaches  us,  all  strained  and  filtered  and  refined, 
exquisitely  coloured  and  even  a  bit  conspicuously  sophisticated, 
through  the  heavy  air  of  the  past  that  hangs  about  the  place 
for  ever. 

I  first  knew  Florence  early  enough,  I  am  happy  to  say,  to  have 
heard  the  change  for  the  worse,  the  taint  of  the  modern  order, 
bitterly  lamented  by  old  haunters,  admirers,  lovers  —  those 
qualified  to  present  a  picture  of  the  conditions  prevailing  under 
the  good  old  Grand-Dukes,  the  two  last  of  their  line  in  especial, 
that,  for  its  blest  reflection  of  sweetness  and  mildness  and  cheap 
ness  and  ease,  of  every  immediate  boon  in  life  to  be  enjoyed  quite 
for  nothing,  could  but  draw  tears  from  belated  listeners.  Some 
of  these  survivors  from  the  golden  age  —  just  the  beauty  of 
which  indeed  was  in  the  gold,  of  sorts,  that  it  poured  into  your 
lap,  and  not  in  the  least  in  its  own  importunity  on  that  head  — 

[376 1 


THE  AUTUMN   IN  FLORENCE 

have  needfully  lingered  on,  have  seen  the  ancient  walls  pulled 
down  and  the  compact  and  belted  mass  of  which  the  Piazza  della 
Signoria  was  the  immemorial  centre  expand,  under  the  treatment 
of  enterprising  syndics,  into  an  ungirdled  organism  of  the  type, 
as  they  viciously  say,  of  Chicago ;  one  of  those  places  of  which, 
as  their  grace  of  a  circumference  is  nowhere,  the  dignity  of  a  centre 
can  no  longer  be  predicated.  Florence  loses  itself  to-day  in  dusty 
boulevards  and  smart  beaux  quartiers,  such  as  Napoleon  III  and 
Baron  Haussmann  were  to  set  the  fashion  of  to  a  too  mediaeval 
Europe  —  with  the  effect  of  some  precious  page  of  antique  text 
swallowed  up  in  a  marginal  commentary  that  smacks  of  the 
style  of  the  newspaper.  So  much  for  what  has  happened  on  this 
side  of  that  line  of  demarcation  which,  by  an  odd  law,  makes 
us,  with  our  preference  for  what  we  are  pleased  to  call  the  pic 
turesque,  object  to  such  occurrences  even  as  occurrences.  The 
real  truth  is  that  objections  are  too  vain,  and  that  he  would 
be  too  rude  a  critic  here,  just  now,  who  should  n't  be  in  the 
humour  to  take  the  thick  with  the  thin  and  to  try  at  least  to 
read  something  of  the  old  soul  into  the  new  forms. 

There  is  something  to  be  said  moreover  for  your  liking  a  city 
(once  it's  a  question  of  your  actively  circulating)  to  pretend  to 
comfort  you  more  by  its  extent  than  by  its  limits;  in  addition 
to  which  Florence  was  anciently,  was  in  her  palmy  days  pecul 
iarly,  a  daughter  of  change  and  movement  and  variety,  of  shift 
ing  moods,  policies  and  regimes  —  just  as  the  Florentine  char 
acter,  as  we  have  it  to-day,  is  a  character  that  takes  all  things 
easily  for  having  seen  so  many  come  and  go.  It  saw  the  national 

[37?  i 


ITALIAN   HOURS 

capital,  a  few  years  since,  arrive  and  sit  down  by  the  Arno,  and 
took  no  further  thought  than  sufficed  for  the  day;  then  it  saw 
the  odd  visitor  depart  and  whistled  her  cheerfully  on  her  way  to 
Rome.  The  new  boulevards  of  the  Sindaco  Peruzzi  come,  it  may 
be  said,  but  they  don't  go ;  which,  after  all,  it  is  n't  from  the 
aesthetic  point  of  view  strictly  necessary  they  should.  A  part  of 
the  essential  amiability  of  Florence,  of  her  genius  for  making 
you  take  to  your  favour  on  easy  terms  everything  that  in  any  way 
belongs  to  her,  is  that  she  has  already  flung  an  element  of  her 
grace  over  all  their  undried  mortar  and  plaster.  Such  modern 
arrangements  as  the  Piazza  d'  Azeglio  and  the  vide  or  Avenue 
of  the  Princess  Margaret  please  not  a  little,  I  think  —  for  what 
they  are !  —  and  do  so  even  in  a  degree,  by  some  fine  local  privi 
lege,  just  because  they  are  Florentine.  The  afternoon  lights  rest 
on  them  as  if  to  thank  them  for  not  being  worse,  and  their  vistas 
are  liberal  where  they  look  toward  the  hills.  They  carry  you 
close  to  these  admirable  elevations,  which  hang  over  Florence  on 
all  sides,  and  if  in  the  foreground  your  sense  is  a  trifle  perplexed 
by  the  white  pavements  dotted  here  and  there  with  a  policeman 
or  a  nursemaid,  you  have  only  to  reach  beyond  and  see  Fiesole 
turn  to  violet,  on  its  ample  eminence,  from  the  effect  of  the  oppo 
site  sunset. 

Facing  again  then  to  Florence  proper  you  have  local  colour 
enough  and  to  spare  —  which  you  enjoy  the  more,  doubtless, 
from  standing  off  to  get  your  light  and  your  point  of  view.  The 
elder  streets  abutting  on  all  this  newness  bore  away  into  the 
heart  of  the  city  in  narrow,  dusky  perspectives  that  quite  refine, 

[378] 


THE  AUTUMN   IN  FLORENCE 

in  certain  places,  by  an  art  of  their  own,  on  the  romantic  appeal. 
There  are  temporal  and  other  accidents  thanks  to  which,  as  you 
pause  to  look  down  them  and  to  penetrate  the  deepening  shadows 
that  accompany  their  retreat,  they  resemble  little  corridors  lead 
ing  out  from  the  past,  mystical  like  the  ladder  in  Jacob's  dream; 
so  that  when  you  see  a  single  figure  advance  and  draw  nearer 
you  are  half  afraid  to  wait  till  it  arrives  —  it  must  be  too  much 
of  the  nature  of  a  ghost,  a  messenger  from  an  underworld.  How 
ever  this  may  be,  a  place  paved  with  such  great  mosaics  of  slabs 
and  lined  with  palaces  of  so  massive  a  tradition,  structures  which, 
in  their  large  dependence  on  pure  proportion  for  interest  and 
beauty,  reproduce  more  than  other  modern  styles  the  simple  noble 
ness  of  Greek  architecture,  must  ever  have  placed  dignity  first 
in  the  scale  of  invoked  effect  and  laid  up  no  great  treasure  of  that 
ragged  picturesqueness  —  the  picturesqueness  of  large  poverty 
—  on  which  we  feast  our  idle  eyes  at  Rome  and  Naples.  Except 
in  the  unfinished  fronts  of  the  churches,  which,  however,  unfor 
tunately,  are  mere  ugly  blankness,  one  finds  less  of  the  poetry 
of  ancient  over-use,  or  in  other  words  less  romantic  southern 
shabbiness,  than  in  most  Italian  cities.  At  two  or  three  points, 
none  the  less,  this  sinister  grace  exists  in  perfection  —  just  such 
perfection  as  so  often  proves  that  what  is  literally  hideous  may 
be  constructively  delightful  and  what  is  intrinsically  tragic  play 
on  the  finest  chords  of  appreciation.  On  the  north  side  of  the 
Arno,  between  Ponte  Vecchio  and  Ponte  Santa  Trinita,  is  a  row 
of  immemorial  houses  that  back  on  the  river,  in  whose  yellow 
flood  they  bathe  their  sore  old  feet.  Anything  more  battered  and 

[379  ] 


ITALIAN  HOURS 

befouled,  more  cracked  and  disjointed,  dirtier,  drearier,  poorer, 
it  would  be  impossible  to  conceive.  They  look  as  if  fifty  years 
ago  the  liquid  mud  had  risen  over  their  chimneys  and  then  sub 
sided  again  and  left  them  coated  for  ever  with  its  unsightly  slime. 
And  yet  forsooth,  because  the  river  is  yellow,  and  the  light  is 
yellow,  and  here  and  there,  elsewhere,  some  mellow  moulder 
ing  surface,  some  hint  of  colour,  some  accident  of  atmosphere, 
takes  up  the  foolish  tale  and  repeats  the  note  —  because,  in  short, 
it  is  Florence,  it  is  Italy,  and  the  fond  appraiser,  the  infatu 
ated  alien,  may  have  had  in  his  eyes,  at  birth  and  afterwards, 
the  micaceous  sparkle  of  brown-stone  fronts  no  more  interesting 
than  so  much  sand-paper,  these  miserable  dwellings,  instead  of 
suggesting  mental  invocations  to  an  enterprising  board  of  health, 
simply  create  their  own  standard  of  felicity  and  shamelessly  live 
in  it.  Lately,  during  the  misty  autumn  nights,  the  moon  has 
shone  on  them  faintly  and  refined  their  shabbiness  away  into 
something  ineffably  strange  and  spectral.  The  turbid  stream 
sweeps  along  without  a  sound,  and  the  pale  tenements  hang  above 
it  like  a  vague  miasmatic  exhalation.  The  dimmest  back-scene 
at  the  opera,  when  the  tenor  is  singing  his  sweetest,  seems  hardly 
to  belong  to  a  world  more  detached  from  responsibility. 

What  it  is  that  infuses  so  rich  an  interest  into  the  general 
charm  is  difficult  to  say  in  a  few  words ;  yet  as  we  wander  hither 
and  thither  in  quest  of  sacred  canvas  and  immortal  bronze  and 
stone  we  still  feel  the  genius  of  the  place  hang  about.  Two  in 
dustrious  English  ladies,  the  Misses  Horner,  have  lately  pub 
lished  a  couple  of  volumes  of  "Walks"  by  the  Arno-side,  and 

[380] 


' 


•;:.-*  r. 


ON     THK     ARNO,     l-'LOKliNCE. 


THE  AUTUMN  IN  FLORENCE 

their  work  is  a  long  enumeration  of  great  artistic  deeds.  These 
things  remain  for  the  most  part  in  sound  preservation,  and,  as 
the  weeks  go  by  and  you  spend  a  constant  portion  of  your  days 
among  them  the  sense  of  one  of  the  happiest  periods  of  human 
Taste  —  to  put  it  only  at  that  —  settles  upon  your  spirit.  It  was 
not  long;  it  lasted,  in  its  splendour,  for  less  than  a  century; 
but  it  has  stored  away  in  the  palaces  and  churches  of  Florence 
a  heritage  of  beauty  that  these  three  enjoying  centuries  since 
have  n't  yet  exhausted.  This  forms  a  clear  intellectual  atmos 
phere  into  which  you  may  turn  aside  from  the  modern  world 
and  fill  your  lungs  as  with  the  breath  of  a  forgotten  creed.  The 
memorials  of  the  past  here  address  us  moreover  with  a  friendli 
ness,  win  us  by  we  scarcely  know  what  sociability,  what  equal 
amenity,  that  we  scarce  find  matched  in  other  great  aestheti 
cally  endowed  communities  and  periods.  Venice,  with  her  old 
palaces  cracking  under  the  weight  of  their  treasures,  is,  in  her 
influence,  insupportably  sad ;  Athens,  with  her  maimed  marbles 
and  dishonoured  memories,  transmutes  the  consciousness  of 
sensitive  observers,  I  am  told,  into  a  chronic  heartache;  but  in 
one's  impression  of  old  Florence  the  abiding  felicity,  the  sense 
of  saving  sanity,  of  something  sound  and  human,  predominates, 
offering  you  a  medium  still  conceivable  for  life.  The  reason  of 
this  is  partly,  no  doubt,  the  "sympathetic"  nature,  the  temper 
ate  joy,  of  Florentine  art  in  general  —  putting  the  sole  Dante, 
greatest  of  literary  artists,  aside ;  partly  the  tenderness  of  time, 
in  its  lapse,  which,  save  in  a  few  cases,  has  been  as  sparing  of 
injury  as  if  it  knew  that  when  it  should  have  dimmed  and  cor- 

[381  ] 


ITALIAN  HOURS 

roded  these  charming  things  it  would  have  nothing  so  sweet  again 
for  its  tooth  to  feed  on.  If  the  beautiful  Ghirlandaios  and  Lip- 
pis  are  fading,  this  generation  will  never  know  it.  The  large  Fra 
Angelico  in  the  Academy  is  as  clear  and  keen  as  if  the  good  old 
monk  stood  there  wiping  his  brushes;  the  colours  seem  to  sing, 
as  it  were,  like  new-fledged  birds  in  June.  Nothing  is  more  char 
acteristic  of  early  Tuscan  art  than  the  high-reliefs  of  Luca  della 
Robbia ;  yet  there  is  n't  one  of  them  that,  except  for  the  unique 
mixture  of  freshness  with  its  wisdom,  of  candour  with  its  expert- 
ness,  might  n't  have  been  modelled  yesterday. 

But  perhaps  the  best  image  of  the  absence  of  stale  melancholy 
or  wasted  splendour,  of  the  positive  presence  of  what  I  have 
called  temperate  joy,  in  the  Florentine  impression  and  genius, 
is  the  bell- tower  of  Giotto,  which  rises  beside  the  cathedral.  No 
beholder  of  it  will  have  forgotten  how  straight  and  slender  it 
stands  there,  how  strangely  rich  in  the  common  street,  plated 
with  coloured  marble  patterns,  and  yet  so  far  from  simple  or 
severe  in  design  that  we  easily  wonder  how  its  author,  the  painter 
of  exclusively  and  portentously  grave  little  pictures,  should  have 
fashioned  a  building  which  in  the  way  of  elaborate  elegance,  of 
the  true  play  of  taste,  leaves  a  jealous  modern  criticism  nothing 
to  miss.  Nothing  can  be  imagined  at  once  more  lightly  and  more 
pointedly  fanciful;  it  might  have  been  handed  over  to  the  city, 
as  it  stands,  by  some  Oriental  genie  tired  of  too  much  detail. 
Yet  for  all  that  suggestion  it  seems  of  no  particular  time  —  not 
grey  and  hoary  like  a  Gothic  steeple,  not  cracked  and  despoiled 
like  a  Greek  temple;  its  marbles  shining  so  little  less  freshly 

[382] 


THE  AUTUMN  IN  FLORENCE 

than  when  they  were  laid  together,  and  the  sunset  lighting  up 
its  cornice  with  such  a  friendly  radiance,  that  you  come  at  last 
to  regard  it  simply  as  the  graceful,  indestructible  soul  of  the 
place  made  visible.  The  Cathedral,  externally,  for  all  its  solemn 
hugeness,  strikes  the  same  note  of  would-be  reasoned  elegance 
and  cheer ;  it  has  conventional  grandeur,  of  course,  but  a  grand 
eur  so  frank  and  ingenuous  even  in  its  parti-pris.  It  has  seen  so 
much,  and  outlived  so  much,  and  served  so  many  sad  purposes, 
and  yet  remains  in  aspect  so  full  of  the  fine  Tuscan  geniality, 
the  feeling  for  life,  one  may  almost  say  the  feeling  for  amuse 
ment,  that  inspired  it.  Its  vast  many-coloured  marble  walls 
become  at  any  rate,  with  this,  the  friendliest  note  of  all  Florence ; 
there  is  an  unfailing  charm  in  walking  past  them  while  they  lift 
their  great  acres  of  geometrical  mosaic  higher  in  the  air  than 
you  have  time  or  other  occasion  to  look.  You  greet  them  from 
the  deep  street  as  you  greet  the  side  of  a  mountain  when  you 
move  in  the  gorge  —  not  twisting  back  your  head  to  keep  looking 
at  the  top,  but  content  with  the  minor  accidents,  the  nestling 
hollows  and  soft  cloud-shadows,  the  general  protection  of  the 
valley. 

Florence  is  richer  in  pictures  than  we  really  know  till  we  have 
begun  to  look  for  them  in  outlying  corners.  Then,  here  and  there, 
one  comes  upon  lurking  values  and  hidden  gems  that  it  quite 
seems  one  might  as  a  good  New  Yorker  quietly  "bag"  for  the 
so  aspiring  Museum  of  that  city  without  their  being  missed. 
The  Pitti  Palace  is  of  course  a  collection  of  masterpieces;  they 
jostle  each  other  in  their  splendour,  they  perhaps  even,  in  their 

[  383  1 


ITALIAN   HOURS 

merciless  multitude,  rather  fatigue  our  admiration.  The  Uffizi 
is  almost  as  fine  a  show,  and  together  with  that  long  serpentine 
artery  which  crosses  the  Arno  and  connects  them,  making  you 
ask  yourself,  whichever  way  you  take  it,  what  goal  can  be  grand 
enough  to  crown  such  a  journey,  they  form  the  great  central 
treasure-chamber  of  the  town.  But  I  have  been  neglecting  them 
of  late  for  love  of  the  Academy,  where  there  are  fewer  copyists 
and  tourists,  above  all  fewer  pictorial  lions,  those  whose  roar  is 
heard  from  afar  and  who  strike  us  as  expecting  overmuch  to 
have  it  their  own  way  in  the  jungle.  The  pictures  at  the  Academy 
are  all,  rather,  doves  —  the  whole  impression  is  less  pompously 
tropical.  Selection  still  leaves  one  too  much  to  say,  but  I  noted 
here,  on  my  last  occasion,  an  enchanting  Botticelli  so  obscurely 
hung,  in  one  of  the  smaller  rooms,  that  I  scarce  knew  whether 
most  to  enjoy  or  to  resent  its  relegation.  Placed,  in  a  mean  black 
frame,  where  you  would  n't  have  looked  for  a  masterpiece,  it 
yet  gave  out  to  a  good  glass  every  characteristic  of  one.  Repre 
senting  as  it  does  the  walk  of  Tobias  with  the  angel,  there  are 
really  parts  of  it  that  an  angel  might  have  painted ;  but  I  doubt 
whether  it  is  observed  by  half-a-dozen  persons  a  year.  That  was 
my  excuse  for  my  wanting  to  know,  on  the  spot,  though  doubtless 
all  sophistically,  what  dishonour,  could  the  transfer  be  artfully 
accomplished,  a  strong  American  light  and  a  brave  gilded  frame 
would,  comparatively  speaking,  do  it.  There  and  then  it  would 
shine  with  the  intense  authority  that  we  claim  for  the  fairest 
things  —  would  exhale  its  wondrous  beauty  as  a  sovereign  exam 
ple.  What  it  comes  to  is  that  this  master  is  the  most  interest- 

[384] 


THE  AUTUMN   IN   FLORENCE 

ing  of  a  great  band  —  the  only  Florentine  save  Leonardo  and 
Michael  in  whom  the  impulse  was  original  and  the  invention 
rare.  His  imagination  is  of  things  strange,  subtle  and  complicated 
-  things  it  at  first  strikes  us  that  we  moderns  have  reason  to 
know,  and  that  it  has  taken  us  all  the  ages  to  learn;  so  that  we 
permit  ourselves  to  wonder  how  a  "primitive"  could  come  by 
them.  We  soon  enough  reflect,  however,  that  we  ourselves  have 
come  by  them  almost  only  through  him,  exquisite  spirit  that  he 
was,  and  that  when  we  enjoy,  or  at  least  when  we  encounter, 
in  our  William  Morrises,  in  our  Rossettis  and  Burne- Joneses, 
the  note  of  the  haunted  or  over-charged  consciousness,  we  are 
but  treated,  with  other  matters,  to  repeated  doses  of  diluted 
Botticelli.  He  practically  set  with  his  own  hand  almost  all  the 
copies  to  almost  all  our  so-called  pre-Raphaelites,  earlier  and 
later,  near  and  remote. 

Let  us  at  the  same  time,  none  the  less,  never  fail  of  response 
to  the  great  Florentine  geniality  at  large.  Fra  Angelico,  Filippo 
Lippi,  Ghirlandaio,  were  not  "subtly"  imaginative,  were  not 
even  riotously  so;  but  what  other  three  were  ever  more  gladly 
observant,  more  vividly  and  richly  true  ?  If  there  should  some 
time  be  a  weeding  out  of  the  world's  possessions  the  best  works 
of  the  early  Florentines  will  certainly  be  counted  among  the 
flowers.  With  the  ripest  performances  of  the  Venetians  —  by 
which  I  don't  mean  the  over-ripe  —  we  can  but  take  them  for  the 
most  valuable  things  in  the  history  of  art.  Heaven  forbid  we 
should  be  narrowed  down  to  a  cruel  choice ;  but  if  it  came  to  a 
question  of  keeping  or  losing  between  half-a-dozen  Raphaels  and 


ITALIAN   HOURS 

half-a-dozen  things  it  would  be  a  joy  to  pick  out  at  the  Academy, 
I  fear  that,  for  myself,  the  memory  of  the  Transfiguration,  or 
indeed  of  the  other  Roman  relics  of  the  painter,  would  n't  save 
the  Raphaels.  And  yet  this  was  so  far  from  the  opinion  of  a 
patient  artist  whom  I  saw  the  other  day  copying  the  finest  of 
Ghirlandaios  —  a  beautiful  Adoration  of  the  Kings  at  the  Hos 
pital  of  the  Innocenti.  Here  was  another  sample  of  the  buried 
art-wealth  of  Florence.  It  hangs  in  an  obscure  chapel,  far  aloft, 
behind  an  altar,  and  though  now  and  then  a  stray  tourist  wan 
ders  in  and  puzzles  a  while  over  the  vaguely-glowing  forms,  the 
picture  is  never  really  seen  and  enjoyed.  I  found  an  aged  French 
man  of  modest  mien  perched  on  a  little  platform  beneath  it, 
behind  a  great  hedge  of  altar-candlesticks,  with  an  admirable 
copy  all  completed.  The  difficulties  of  his  task  had  been  well- 
nigh  insuperable,  and  his  performance  seemed  to  me  a  real  feat  of 
magic.  He  could  scarcely  move  or  turn,  and  could  find  room  for 
his  canvas  but  by  rolling  it  together  and  painting  a  small  piece 
at  a  time,  so  that  he  never  enjoyed  a  view  of  his  ensemble.  The 
original  is  gorgeous  with  colour  and  bewildering  with  decorative 
detail,  but  not  a  gleam  of  the  painter's  crimson  was  wanting,  not 
a  curl  in  his  gold  arabesques.  It  seemed  to  me  that  if  I  had  copied 
a  Ghirlandaio  in  such  conditions  I  would  at  least  maintain  for 
my  own  credit  that  he  was  the  first  painter  in  the  world.  "  Very 
good  of  its  kind,"  said  the  weary  old  man  with  a  shrug  of  reply 
for  my  raptures;  "but  oh,  how  far  short  of  Raphael!"  However 
that  may  be,  if  the  reader  chances  to  observe  this  consummate 
copy  in  the  so  commendable  Museum  devoted  in  Paris  to  such 

[386] 


THE  AUTUMN  IN  FLORENCE 

works,  let  him  stop  before  it  with  a  due  reverence ;  it  is  one  of 
the  patient  things  of  art.  Seeing  it  wrought  there,  in  its  dusky 
nook,  under  such  scant  convenience,  I  found  no  bar  in  the  paint 
er's  foreignness  to  a  thrilled  sense  that  the  old  art-life  of  Flor 
ence  is  n't  yet  extinct.  It  still  at  least  works  spells  and  almost 
miracles. 

1873- 


FLORENTINE  NOTES 


FLORENTINE  NOTES 

I 

|ESTERDAY  that  languid  organism  known 
as  the  Florentine  Carnival  put  on  a  mo 
mentary  semblance  of  vigour,  and  decreed 
a  general  corso  through  the  town.  The 
spectacle  was  not  brilliant,  but  it  suggested 
some  natural  reflections.  I  encountered 
the  line  of  carriages  in  the  square  before 
Santa  Croce,  of  which  they  were  making 
the  circuit.  They  rolled  solemnly  by,  with  their  inmates  frown 
ing  forth  at  each  other  in  apparent  wrath  at  not  finding  each 
other  more  worth  while.  There  were  no  masks,  no  costumes, 
no  decorations,  no  throwing  of  flowers  or  sweetmeats.  It  was 
as  if  each  carriageful  had  privately  and  not  very  heroically  re 
solved  not  to  be  at  costs,  and  was  rather  discomfited  at  finding 
that  it  was  getting  no  better  entertainment  than  it  gave.  The 
middle  of  the  piazza  was  filled  with  little  tables,  with  shouting 
mountebanks,  mostly  disguised  in  battered  bonnets  and  crino 
lines,  offering  chances  in  raffles  for  plucked  fowls  and  kerosene 
lamps.  I  have  never  thought  the  huge  marble  statue  of  Dante, 
which  overlooks  the  sceae,  a  work  of  the  last  refinement ;  but,  as 

[39-  ] 


ITALIAN  HOURS 

it  stood  there  on  its  high  pedestal,  chin  in  hand,  frowning  down 
on  all  this  cheap  foolery,  it  seemed  to  have  a  great  moral  inten 
tion.  The  carriages  followed  a  prescribed  course  —  through  Via 
Ghibellina,  Via  del  Proconsolo,  past  the  Badia  and  the  Bargello, 
beneath  the  great  tessellated  cliffs  of  the  Cathedral,  through  Via 
Tornabuoni  and  out  into  ten  minutes'  sunshine  beside  the  Arno. 
Much  of  all  this  is  the  gravest  and  stateliest  part  of  Florence, 
a  quarter  of  supreme  dignity,  and  there  was  an  almost  ludicrous 
incongruity  in  seeing  Pleasure  leading  her  train  through  these 
dusky  historic  streets.  It  was  most  uncomfortably  cold,  and  in 
the  absence  of  masks  many  a  fair  nose  was  fantastically  tipped 
with  purple.  But  as  the  carriages  crept  solemnly  along  they 
seemed  to  keep  a  funeral  march  —  to  follow  an  antique  custom, 
an  exploded  faith,  to  its  tomb.  The  Carnival  is  dead,  and  these 
good  people  who  had  come  abroad  to  make  merry  were  funeral 
mutes  and  grave-diggers.  Last  winter  in  Rome  it  showed  but  a 
galvanised  life,  yet  compared  with  this  humble  exhibition  it  was 
operatic.  At  Rome  indeed  it  was  too  operatic.  The  knights  on 
horseback  there  were  a  bevy  of  circus-riders,  and  I  'm  sure  half 
the  mad  revellers  repaired  every  night  to  the  Capitol  for  their 
twelve  sous  a  day. 

I  have  just  been  reading  over  the  Letters  of  the  President  de 
Brosses.  A  hundred  years  ago,  in  Venice,  the  Carnival  lasted  six 
months;  and  at  Rome  for  many  weeks  each  year  one  was  free, 
under  cover  of  a  mask,  to  perpetrate  the  most  fantastic  follies 
and  cultivate  the  most  remunerative  vices.  It's  very  well  to  read 
the  President's  notes,  which  have  indeed  a  singular  interest;  but 

[392] 


FLORENTINE  NOTES 

they  make  us  ask  ourselves  why  we  should  expect  the  Italians 
to  persist  in  manners  and  practices  which  we  ourselves,  if  we 
had  responsibilities  in  the  matter,  should  find  intolerable.  The 
Florentines  at  any  rate  spend  no  more  money  nor  faith  on  the 
carnivalesque.  And  yet  this  truth  has  a  qualification;  for  what 
struck  me  in  the  whole  spectacle  yesterday,  and  prompted  these 
observations,  was  not  at  all  the  more  or  less  of  costume  of  the  oc 
cupants  of  the  carriages,  but  the  obstinate  survival  of  the  merry 
making  instinct  in  the  people  at  large.  There  could  be  no  better 
example  of  it  than  that  so  dim  a  shadow  of  entertainment  should 
keep  all  Florence  standing  and  strolling,  densely  packed  for  hours, 
in  the  cold  streets.  There  was  nothing  to  see  that  might  n't  be 
seen  on  the  Cascine  any  fine  day  in  the  year — nothing  but  a  name, 
a  tradition,  a  pretext  for  sweet  staring  idleness.  The  faculty  of 
making  much  of  common  things  and  converting  small  occasions 
into  great  pleasures  is,  to  a  son  of  communities  strenuous  as  ours 
are  strenuous,  the  most  salient  characteristic  of  the  so-called  Latin 
civilisations.  It  charms  him  and  vexes  him,  according  to  his  mood ; 
and  for  the  most  part  it  represents  a  moral  gulf  between  his  own 
temperamental  and  indeed  spiritual  sense  of  race,  and  that  of 
Frenchmen  and  Italians,  far  wider  than  the  watery  leagues  that 
a  steamer  may  annihilate.  But  I  think  his  mood  is  wisest  when 
he  accepts  the  "foreign"  easy  surrender  to  all  the  senses  as  the 
sign  of  an  unconscious  philosophy  of  life,  instilled  by  the  experi 
ence  of  centuries  —  the  philosophy  of  people  who  have  lived  long 
and  much,  who  have  discovered  no  short  cuts  to  happiness  and 
no  effective  circumvention  of  effort,  and  so  have  come  to  regard 

[393] 


ITALIAN  HOURS 

the  average  lot  as  a  ponderous  fact  that  absolutely  calls  for  a  cer 
tain  amount  of  sitting  on  the  lighter  tray  of  the  scales.  Florence 
yesterday  then  took  its  holiday  in  a  natural,  placid  fashion  that 
seemed  to  make  its  own  temper  an  affair  quite  independent  of 
the  splendour  of  the  compensation  decreed  on  a  higher  line  to  the 
weariness  of  its  legs.  That  the  corso  was  stupid  or  lively  was  the 
shame  or  the  glory  of  the  powers  "above"  —  the  fates,  the  gods, 
the  forestieri,  the  town-councilmen,  the  rich  or  the  stingy.  Com 
mon  Florence,  on  the  narrow  footways,  pressed  against  the  houses, 
obeyed  a  natural  need  in  looking  about  complacently,  patiently, 
gently,  and  never  pushing,  nor  trampling,  nor  swearing,  nor  stag 
gering.  This  liberal  margin  for  festivals  in  Italy  gives  the  masses 
a  more  than  man-of-the-world  urbanity  in  taking  their  pleasure. 

Meanwhile  it  occurs  to  me  that  by  a  remote  New  England 
fireside  an  unsophisticated  young  person  of  either  sex  is  reading 
in  an  old  volume  of  travels  or  an  old  romantic  tale  some  account 
of  these  anniversaries  and  appointed  revels  as  old  Catholic  lands 
offer  them  to  view.  Across  the  page  swims  a  vision  of  sculptured 
palace-fronts  draped  in  crimson  and  gold  and  shining  in  a  south 
ern  sun ;  of  a  motley  train  of  maskers  sweeping  on  in  voluptuous 
confusion  and  pelting  each  other  with  nosegays  and  love-letters. 
Into  the  quiet  room,  quenching  the  rhythm  of  the  Connecticut 
clock,  floats  an  uproar  of  delighted  voices,  a  medley  of  stirring 
foreign  sounds,  an  echo  of  far-heard  music  of  a  strangely  alien 
cadence.  But  the  dusk  is  falling,  and  the  unsophisticated  young 
person  closes  the  book  wearily  and  wanders  to  the  window.  The 
dusk  is  falling  on  the  beaten  snow.  Down  the  road  is  a  white 

[  394  ] 


FLORENTINE  NOTES 

wooden  meeting-house,  looking  grey  among  the  drifts.  The  young 
person  surveys  the  prospect  a  while,  and  then  wanders  back 
and  stares  at  the  fire.  The  Carnival  of  Venice,  of  Florence,  of 
Rome;  colour  and  costume,  romance  and  rapture!  The  young 
person  gazes  in  the  firelight  at  the  flickering  chiaroscuro  of  the 
future,  discerns  at  last  the  glowing  phantasm  of  opportunity,  and 
determines  with  a  wild  heart-beat  to  go  and  see  it  all  —  twenty 
years  hence! 


II 

A  COUPLE  of  days  since,  driving  to  Fiesole,  we  came  back  by 
the  castle  of  Vincigliata.  The  afternoon  was  lovely;  and,  though 
there  is  as  yet  (February  loth)  no  visible  revival  of  vegetation,  the 
air  was  full  of  a  vague  vernal  perfume,  and  the  warm  colours 
of  the  hills  and  the  yellow  western  sunlight  flooding  the  plain 
seemed  to  contain  the  promise  of  Nature's  return  to  grace.  It's 
true  that  above  the  distant  pale  blue  gorge  of  Vallombrosa  the 
mountain-line  was  tipped  with  snow;  but  the  liberated  soul  of 
Spring  was  nevertheless  at  large.  The  view  from  Fiesole  seems 
vaster  and  richer  with  each  visit.  The  hollow  in  which  Florence 
lies,  and  which  from  below  seems  deep  and  contracted,  opens 
out  into  an  immense  and  generous  valley  and  leads  away  the  eye 
into  a  hundred  gradations  of  distance.  The  place  itself  showed, 
amid  its  chequered  fields  and  gardens,  with  as  many  towers  and 
spires  as  a  chess-board  half  cleared.  The  domes  and  towers  were 

[395] 


ITALIAN  HOURS 

washed  over  with  a  faint  blue  mist.  The  scattered  columns  of 
smoke,  interfused  with  the  sinking  sunlight,  hung  over  them 
like  streamers  and  pennons  of  silver  gauze ;  and  the  Arno,  twist 
ing  and  curling  and  glittering  here  and  there,  was  a  serpent 
cross-striped  with  silver. 

Vincigliata  is  a  product  of  the  millions,  the  leisure  and  the 
eccentricity,  I  suppose  people  say,  of  an  English  gentleman  — 
Mr.  Temple  Leader,  whose  name  should  be  commemorated. 
You  reach  the  castle  from  Fiesole  by  a  narrow  road,  returning 
toward  Florence  by  a  romantic  twist  through  the  hills  and  pass 
ing  nothing  on  its  way  save  thin  plantations  of  cypress  and  cedar. 
Upward  of  twenty  years  ago,  I  believe,  this  gentleman  took  a 
fancy  to  the  crumbling  shell  of  a  mediaeval  fortress  on  a  breezy 
hill-top  overlooking  the  Val  d'  Arno  and  forthwith  bought  it  and 
began  to  "restore"  it.  I  know  nothing  of  what  the  original  ruin 
may  have  cost;  but  in  the  dusky  courts  and  chambers  of  the 
present  elaborate  structure  this  impassioned  archaeologist  must 
have  buried  a  fortune.  He  has,  however,  the  compensation  of 
feeling  that  he  has  erected  a  monument  which,  if  it  is  never  to 
stand  a  feudal  siege,  may  encounter  at  least  some  critical  over 
hauling.  It  is  a  disinterested  work  of  art  and  really  a  triumph  of 
aesthetic  culture.  The  author  has  reproduced  with  minute  accu 
racy  a  sturdy  home-fortress  of  the  fourteenth  century,  and  has 
kept  throughout  such  rigid  terms  with  his  model  that  the  result 
is  literally  uninhabitable  to  degenerate  moderns.  It  is  simply 
a  massive  facsimile,  an  elegant  museum  of  archaic  images,  mainly 
but  most  amusingly  counterfeit,  perched  on  a  spur  of  the  Apen- 

[396] 


FLORENTINE   NOTES 

nines.  The  place  is  most  politely  shown.  There  is  a  charming 
cloister,  painted  with  extremely  clever  "quaint"  frescoes,  cele 
brating  the  deeds  of  the  founders  of  the  castle  —  a  cloister  that 
is  everything  delightful  a  cloister  should  be  except  truly  vener 
able  and  employable.  There  is  a  beautiful  castle  court,  with  the 
embattled  tower  climbing  into  the  blue  far  above  it,  and  a  spa 
cious  loggia  with  rugged  medallions  and  mild-hued  Luca  della 
Robbias  fastened  unevenly  into  the  walls.  But  the  apartments 
are  the  great  success,  and  each  of  them  as  good  a  "  reconstruction" 
as  a  tale  of  Walter  Scott;  or,  to  speak  frankly,  a  much  better  one. 
They  are  all  low-beamed  and  vaulted,  stone-paved,  decorated  in 
grave  colours  and  lighted,  from  narrow,  deeply  recessed  win 
dows,  through  small  leaden-ringed  plates  of  opaque  glass. 

The  details  are  infinitely  ingenious  and  elaborately  grim,  and 
the  indoor  atmosphere  of  medievalism  most  forcibly  revived. 
No  compromising  fact  of  domiciliary  darkness  and  cold  is  spared 
us,  no  producing  condition  of  mediaeval  manners  not  glanced  at. 
There  are  oaken  benches  round  the  room,  of  about  six  inches 
in  depth,  and  gaunt  fauteuils  of  wrought  leather,  illustrating  the 
suppressed  transitions  which,  as  George  Eliot  says,  unite  all 
contrasts  —  offering  a  visible  link  between  the  modern  concep 
tions  of  torture  and  of  luxury.  There  are  fireplaces  nowhere 
but  in  the  kitchen,  where  a  couple  of  sentry-boxes  are  inserted 
on  either  side  of  the  great  hooded  chimney-piece,  into  which 
people  might  creep  and  take  their  turn  at  being  toasted  and 
smoked.  One  may  doubt  whether  this  dearth  of  the  hearth 
stone  could  have  raged  on  such  a  scale,  but  it's  a  happy  stroke 

[397] 


ITALIAN  HOURS 

in  the  representation  of  an  Italian  dwelling  of  any  period.  It 
shows  how  the  graceful  fiction  that  Italy  is  all  "meridional" 
flourished  for  some  time  before  being  refuted  by  grumbling  tour 
ists.  And  yet  amid  this  cold  comfort  you  feel  the  incongruous 
presence  of  a  constant  intuitive  regard  for  beauty.  The  shapely 
spring  of  the  vaulted  ceilings;  the  richly  figured  walls,  coarse 
and  hard  in  substance  as  they  are;  the  charming  shapes  of 
the  great  platters  and  flagons  in  the  deep  recesses  of  the  quaintly 
carved  black  dressers;  the  wandering  hand  of  ornament,  as  it 
were,  playing  here  and  there  for  its  own  diversion  in  unlighted 
corners  —  such  things  redress,  to  our  fond  credulity,  with  all 
sorts  of  grace,  the  balance  of  the  picture. 

And  yet,  somehow,  with  what  dim,  unillumined  vision  one 
fancies  even  such  inmates  as  those  conscious  of  finer  needs  than 
the  mere  supply  of  blows  and  beef  and  beer  would  meet  pass 
ing  their  heavy  eyes  over  such  slender  household  beguilements ! 
These  crepuscular  chambers  at  Vincigliata  are  a  mystery  and 
a  challenge ;  they  seem  the  mere  propounding  of  an  answerless 
riddle.  You  long,  as  you  wander  through  them,  turning  up 
your  coat-collar  and  wondering  whether  ghosts  can  catch  bron 
chitis,  to  answer  it  with  some  positive  notion  of  what  people 
so  encaged  and  situated  "did,"  how  they  looked  and  talked  and 
carried  themselves,  how  they  took  their  pains  and  pleasures,  how 
they  counted  off  the  hours.  Deadly  ennui  seems  to  ooze  out  of 
the  stones  and  hang  in  clouds  in  the  brown  corners.  No  wonder 
men  relished  a  fight  and  panted  for  a  fray.  "Skull-smashers" 
were  sweet,  ears  ringing  with  pain  and  ribs  cracking  in  a  tussle 

[398] 


FLORENTINE   NOTES 

were  soothing  music,  compared  with  the  cruel  quietude  of  the 
dim-windowed  castle.  When  they  came  back  they  could  only 
have  slept  a  good  deal  and  eased  their  dislocated  bones  on  those 
meagre  oaken  ledges.  Then  they  woke  up  and  turned  about  to  the 
table  and  ate  their  portion  of  roasted  sheep.  They  shouted  at  each 
other  across  the  board  and  flung  the  wooden  plates  at  the  serving- 
men.  They  jostled  and  hustled  and  hooted  and  bragged ;  and 
then,  after  gorging  and  boozing  and  easing  their  doublets,  they 
squared  their  elbows  one  by  one  on  the  greasy  table  and  buried 
their  scarred  foreheads  and  dreamed  of  a  good  gallop  after  flying 
foes.  And  the  women  ?  They  must  have  been  strangely  simple  — 
simpler  far  than  any  moral  archaeologist  can  show  us  in  a  learned 
restoration.  Of  course,  their  simplicity  had  its  graces  and  devices; 
but  one  thinks  with  a  sigh  that,  as  the  poor  things  turned  away 
with  patient  looks  from  the  viewless  windows  to  the  same,  same 
looming  figures  on  the  dusky  walls,  they  had  n't  even  the  conso 
lation  of  knowing  that  just  this  attitude  and  movement,  set  off  by 
their  peaked  coifs,  their  falling  sleeves  and  heavily-twisted  trains, 
would  sow  the  seed  of  yearning  envy  —  of  sorts  —  on  the  part  of 
later  generations. 

There  are  moods  in  which  one  feels  the  impulse  to  enter  a  tacit 
protest  against  too  gross  an  appetite  for  pure  aesthetics  in  this 
starving  and  sinning  world.  One  turns  half  away,  musingly, 
from  certain  beautiful  useless  things.  But  the  healthier  state  of 
mind  surely  is  to  lay  no  tax  on  any  really  intelligent  manifesta 
tion  of  the  curious  and  exquisite.  Intelligence  hangs  together 
essentially,  all  along  the  line ;  it  only  needs  time  to  make,  as  we 

[399] 


ITALIAN  HOURS 

say,  its  connections.  The  massive  pastiche  of  Vincigliata  has  no 
superficial  use ;  but,  even  if  it  were  less  complete,  less  successful, 
less  brilliant,  I  should  feel  a  reflective  kindness  for  it.  So  disin 
terested  and  expensive  a  toy  is  its  own  justification ;  it  belongs  to 
the  heroics  of  dilettantism. 


Ill 


ONE  grows  to  feel  the  collection  of  pictures  at  the  Pitti  Palace 
splendid  rather  than  interesting.  After  walking  through  it  once  or 
twice  you  catch  the  key  in  which  it  is  pitched  —  you  know  what 
you  are  likely  not  to  find  on  closer  examination ;  none  of  the  works 
of  the  uncompromising  period,  nothing  from  the  half-groping 
geniuses  of  the  early  time,  those  whose  colouring  was  sometimes 
harsh  and  their  outlines  sometimes  angular.  Vague  to  me  the 
principle  on  which  the  pictures  were  originally  gathered  and  of 
the  aesthetic  creed  of  the  princes  who  chiefly  selected  them.  A 
princely  creed  I  should  roughly  call  it  —  the  creed  of  people  who 
believed  in  things  presenting  a  fine  face  to  society ;  who  esteemed 
showy  results  rather  than  curious  processes,  and  would  have 
hardly  cared  more  to  admit  into  their  collection  a  work  by  one 
of  the  laborious  precursors  of  the  full  efflorescence  than  to  see 
a  bucket  and  broom  left  standing  in  a  state  saloon.  The  gallery 
contains  in  literal  fact  some  eight  or  ten  paintings  of  the  early 
Tuscan  School  — -  notably  two  admirable  specimens  of  Filippo 
Lippi  and  one  of  the  frequent  circular  pictures  of  the  great  Bot- 

[  400  ] 


FLORENTINE   NOTES 

ticelli  —  a  Madonna,  chilled  with  tragic  prescience,  laying  a 
pale  cheek  against  that  of  a  blighted  Infant.  Such  a  melan 
choly  mother  as  this  of  Botticelli  would  have  strangled  her  baby 
in  its  cradle  to  rescue  it  from  the  future.  But  of  Botticelli  there 
is  much  to  say.  One  of  the  Filippo  Lippis  is  perhaps  his  mas 
terpiece —  a  Madonna  in  a  small  rose-garden  (such  a  "flowery 
close"  as  Mr.  William  Morris  loves  to  haunt),  leaning  over  an 
Infant  who  kicks  his  little  human  heels  on  the  grass  while  half- 
a-dozen  curly-pated  angels  gather  about  him,  looking  back  over 
their  shoulders  with  the  candour  of  children  in  tableaux  vivants, 
and  one  of  them  drops  an  armful  of  gathered  roses  one  by  one 
upon  the  baby.  The  delightful  earthly  innocence  of  these  winged 
youngsters  is  quite  inexpressible.  Their  heads  are  twisted  about 
toward  the  spectator  as  if  they  were  playing  at  leap-frog  and  were 
expecting  a  companion  to  come  and  take  a  jump.  Never  did 
"young"  art,  never  did  subjective  freshness,  attempt  with  greater 
success  to  represent  those  phases.  But  these  three  fine  works  are 
hung  over  the  tops  of  doors  in  a  dark  back  room  —  the  bucket 
and  broom  are  thrust  behind  a  curtain.  It  seems  to  me,  nev 
ertheless,  that  a  fine  Filippo  Lippi  is  good  enough  company  for 
an  Allori  or  a  Cigoli,  and  that  that  too  deeply  sentient  Virgin  of 
Botticelli  might  happily  balance  the  flower-like  irresponsibility 
of  Raphael's  "Madonna  of  the  Chair." 

Taking  the  Pitti  collection,  however,  simply  for  what  it  pre 
tends  to  be,  it  gives  us  the  very  flower  of  the  sumptuous,  the 
courtly,  the  grand-ducal.  It  is  chiefly  official  art,  as  one  may  say, 
but  it  presents  the  fine  side  of  the  type  —  the  brilliancy,  the  facil- 

[  401  ] 


ITALIAN   HOURS 

ity,  the  amplitude,  the  sovereignty  of  good  taste.  I  agree  on  the 
whole  with  a  nameless  companion  and  with  what  he  lately  re 
marked  about  his  own  humour  on  these  matters;  that,  having 
been  on  his  first  acquaintance  with  pictures  nothing  if  not  criti 
cal,  and  held  the  lesson  incomplete  and  the  opportunity  slighted 
if  he  left  a  gallery  without  a  headache,  he  had  come,  as  he  grew 
older,  to  regard  them  more  as  the  grandest  of  all  pleasantries  and 
less  as  the  most  strenuous  of  all  lessons,  and  to  remind  himself 
that,  after  all,  it  is  the  privilege  of  art  to  make  us  friendly  to  the 
human  mind  and  not  to  make  us  suspicious  of  it.  We  do  in  fact 
as  we  grow  older  unstring  the  critical  bow  a  little  and  strike 
a  truce  with  invidious  comparisons.  We  work  off  the  juvenile 
impulse  to  heated  partisanship  and  discover  that  one  spontane 
ous  producer  is  n't  different  enough  from  another  to  keep  the  all- 
knowing  Fates  from  smiling  over  our  loves  and  our  aversions.  We 
perceive  a  certain  human  solidarity  in  all  cultivated  effort,  and  are 
conscious  of  a  growing  accommodation  of  judgment  —  an  easier 
disposition,  the  fruit  of  experience,  to  take  the  joke  for  what  it  is 
worth  as  it  passes.  We  have  in  short  less  of  a  quarrel  with  the 
masters  we  don't  delight  in,  and  less  of  an  impulse  to  pin  all  our 
faith  on  those  in  whom,  in  more  zealous  days,  we  fancied  that 
we  made  our  peculiar  meanings.  The  meanings  no  longer  seem 
quite  so  peculiar.  Since  then  we  have  arrived  at  a  few  in  the  depths 
of  our  own  genius  that  are  not  sensibly  less  striking. 

And  yet  it  must  be  added  that  all  this  depends  vastly  on  one's 
mood  —  as  a  traveller's  impressions  do,  generally,  to  a  degree 
which  those  who  give  them  to  the  world  would  do  well  more 

[402] 


FLORENTINE   NOTES 

explicitly  to  declare.  We  have  our  hours  of  expansion  and  those 
of  contraction,  and  yet  while  we  follow  the  traveller's  trade  we  go 
about  gazing  and  judging  with  unadjusted  confidence.  We  can't 
suspend  judgment;  we  must  take  our  notes,  and  the  notes  are 
florid  or  crabbed,  as  the  case  may  be.  A  short  time  ago  I  spent 
a  week  in  an  ancient  city  on  a  hill-top,  in  the  humour,  for  which 
I  was  not  to  blame,  which  produces  crabbed  notes.  I  knew  it  at 
the  time,  but  could  n't  help  it.  I  went  through  all  the  motions 
of  liberal  appreciation;  I  uncapped  in  all  the  churches  and  on 
the  massive  ramparts  stared  all  the  views  fairly  out  of  counte 
nance  ;  but  my  imagination,  which  I  suppose  at  bottom  had  very 
good  reasons  of  its  own  and  knew  perfectly  what  it  was  about, 
refused  to  project  into  the  dark  old  town  and  upon  the  yellow 
hills  that  sympathetic  glow  which  forms  half  the  substance  of  our 
genial  impressions.  So  it  is  that  in  museums  and  palaces  we  are 
alternate  radicals  and  conservatives.  On  some  days  we  ask  but 
to  be  somewhat  sensibly  affected ;  on  others,  Ruskin-haunted,  to 
be  spiritually  steadied.  After  a  long  absence  from  the  Pitti  Palace 
I  went  back  there  the  other  morning  and  transferred  myself  from 
chair  to  chair  in  the  great  golden-roofed  saloons  —  the  chairs 
are  all  gilded  and  covered  with  faded  silk  —  in  the  humour  to 
be  diverted  at  any  price.  I  need  n't  mention  the  things  that 
diverted  me;  I  yawn  now  when  I  think  of  some  of  them.  But 
an  artist,  for  instance,  to  whom  my  kindlier  judgment  has  made 
permanent  concessions  is  that  charming  Andrea  del  Sarto.  When 
I  first  knew  him,  in  my  cold  youth,  I  used  to  say  without  mincing 
that  I  did  n't  like  him.  Get  age  est  sans  pitie.  The  fine  sympathetic, 


ITALIAN   HOURS 

melancholy,  pleasing  painter!  He  has  a  dozen  faults,  and  if  you 
insist  pedantically  on  your  rights  the  conclusive  word  you  use 
about  him  will  be  the  word  weak.  But  if  you  are  a  generous 
soul  you  will  utter  it  low  —  low  as  the  mild  grave  tone  of  his 
own  sought  harmonies.  He  is  monotonous,  narrow,  incomplete ; 
he  has  but  a  dozen  different  figures  and  but  two  or  three  ways  of 
distributing  them ;  he  seems  able  to  utter  but  half  his  thought, 
and  his  canvases  lack  apparently  some  final  return  on  the  whole 
matter  —  some  process  which  his  impulse  failed  him  before  he 
could  bestow.  And  yet  in  spite  of  these  limitations  his  genius  is 
both  itself  of  the  great  pattern  and  lighted  by  the  air  of  a  great 
period.  Three  gifts  he  had  largely:  an  instinctive,  unaffected, 
unerring  grace ;  a  large  and  rich,  and  yet  a  sort  of  withdrawn 
and  indifferent  sobriety ;  and  best  of  all,  as  well  as  rarest  of  all, 
an  indescribable  property  of  relatedness  as  to  the  moral  world. 
Whether  he  was  aware  of  the  connection  or  not,  or  in  what 
measure,  I  cannot  say ;  but  he  gives,  so  to  speak,  the  taste  of  it. 
Before  his  handsome  vague-browed  Madonnas;  the  mild,  robust 
young  saints  who  kneel  in  his  foregrounds  and  look  round  at  you 
with  a  conscious  anxiety  which  seems  to  say  that,  though  in  the 
picture,  they  are  not  of  it,  but  of  your  own  sentient  life  of  com 
mingled  love  and  weariness;  the  stately  apostles,  with  comely 
heads  and  harmonious  draperies,  who  gaze  up  at  the  high-seated 
Virgin  like  early  astronomers  at  a  newly  seen  star  —  there  comes 
to  you  the  brush  of  the  dark  wing  of  an  inward  life.  A  shadow 
falls  for  the  moment,  and  in  it  you  feel  the  chill  of  moral  suffering. 
Did  the  Lippis  suffer,  father  or  son  ?  Did  Raphael  suffer  ?  Did 


FLORENTINE   NOTES 

Titian  ?  Did  Rubens  suffer  ?  Perish  the  thought  —  it  would  n't 
be  fair  to  us  that  they  should  have  had  everything.  And  I  note 
in  our  poor  second-rate  Andrea  an  element  of  interest  lacking  to 
a  number  of  stronger  talents. 

Interspersed  with  him  at  the  Pitti  hang  the  stronger  and  the 
weaker  in  splendid  abundance.  Raphael  is  there,  strong  in  por 
traiture  —  easy,  various,  bountiful  genius  that  he  was  —  and 
(strong  here  isn't  the  word,  but)  happy  beyond  the  common 
dream  in  his  beautiful  "Madonna  of  the  Chair."  The  gen 
eral  instinct  of  posterity  seems  to  have  been  to  treat  this  lovely 
picture  as  a  semi-sacred,  an  almost  miraculous,  manifestation. 
People  stand  in  a  worshipful  silence  before  it,  as  they  would 
before  a  taper-studded  shrine.  If  we  suspend  in  imagination  on 
the  right  of  it  the  solid,  realistic,  unidealised  portrait  of  Leo  the 
Tenth  (which  hangs  in  another  room)  and  transport  to  the  left 
the  fresco  of  the  School  of  Athens  from  the  Vatican,  and  then 
reflect  that  these  were  three  separate  fancies  of  a  single  youth 
ful,  amiable  genius  we  recognise  that  such  a  producing  conscious 
ness  must  have  been  a  "treat."  My  companion  already  quoted 
has  a  phrase  that  he  "does  n't  care  for  Raphael,"  but  confesses, 
when  pressed,  that  he  was  a  most  remarkable  young  man.  Titian 
has  a  dozen  portraits  of  unequal  interest.  I  never  particularly 
noticed  till  lately  —  it  is  very  ill  hung  —  that  portentous  image 
of  the  Emperor  Charles  the  Fifth.  He  was  a  burlier,  more  im 
posing  personage  than  his  usual  legend  figures,  and  in  his  great 
puffed  sleeves  and  gold  chains  and  full-skirted  over-dress  he 
seems  to  tell  of  a  tread  that  might  sometimes  have  been  incon- 

[405  ] 


ITALIAN   HOURS 

veniently  resonant.  But  the  purpose  to  have  his  way  and  work 
his  will  is  there  —  the  great  stomach  for  divine  right,  the  old 
monarchical  temperament.  The  great  Titian,  in  portraiture,  how 
ever,  remains  that  formidable  young  man  in  black,  with  the 
small  compact  head,  the  delicate  nose  and  the  irascible  blue 
eye.  Who  was  he?  What  was  he?  "Ritratto  virile"  is  all  the 
catalogue  is  able  to  call  the  picture.  "Virile!"  Rather!  you 
vulgarly  exclaim.  You  may  weave  what  romance  you  please 
about  it,  but  a  romance  your  dream  must  be.  Handsome,  clever, 
defiant,  passionate,  dangerous,  it  was  not  his  own  fault  if  he 
had  n't  adventures  and  to  spare.  He  was  a  gentleman  and  a 
warrior,  and  his  adventures  balanced  between  camp  and  court. 
I  imagine  him  the  young  orphan  of  a  noble  house,  about  to 
come  into  mortgaged  estates.  One  would  n't  have  cared  to  be  his 
guardian,  bound  to  paternal  admonitions  once  a  month  over  his 
precocious  transactions  with  the  Jews  or  his  scandalous  abduc 
tion  from  her  convent  of  such  and  such  a  noble  maiden. 

The   Pitti   Gallery   contains   none   of  Titian's   golden-toned 
groups;  but  it  boasts  a  lovely  composition  by  Paul  Veronese, 

the  dealer  in  silver  hues  —  a  Baptism  of  Christ.  W named 

it  to  me  the  other  day  as  the  picture  he  most  enjoyed,  and  surely 
painting  seems  here  to  have  proposed  to  itself  to  discredit  and 
annihilate  —  and  even  on  the  occasion  of  such  a  subject  — 
everything  but  the  loveliness  of  life.  The  picture  bedims  and  en 
feebles  its  neighbours.  We  ask  ourselves  whether  painting  as 
such  can  go  further.  It  is  simply  that  here  at  last  the  art  stands 
complete.  The  early  Tuscans,  as  well  as  Leonardo,  as  Raphael, 

[406] 


FLORENTINE   NOTES 

as  Michael,  saw  the  great  spectacle  that  surrounded  them  in 
beautiful  sharp-edged  elements  and  parts.  The  great  Venetians 
felt  its  indissoluble  unity  and  recognised  that  form  and  colour 
and  earth  and  air  were  equal  members  of  every  possible  sub 
ject;  and  beneath  their  magical  touch  the  hard  outlines  melted 
together  and  the  blank  intervals  bloomed  with  meaning.  In  this 
beautiful  Paul  Veronese  of  the  Pitti  everything  is  part  of  the 
charm  —  the  atmosphere  as  well  as  the  figures,  the  look  of 
radiant  morning  in  the  white-streaked  sky  as  well  as  the  living 
human  limbs,  the  cloth  of  Venetian  purple  about  the  loins  of  the 
Christ  as  well  as  the  noble  humility  of  his  attitude.  The  rela 
tion  to  Nature  of  the  other  Italian  schools  differs  from  that  of  the 
Venetian  as  courtship  —  even  ardent  courtship  —  differs  from 
marriage. 


IV 


I  WENT  the  other  day  to  the  secularised  Convent  of  San  Marco, 
paid  my  franc  at  the  profane  little  wicket  which  creaks  away  at 
the  door  —  no  less  than  six  custodians,  apparently,  are  needed 
to  turn  it,  as  if  it  may  have  a  recusant  conscience  —  passed  along 
the  bright,  still  cloister  and  paid  my  respects  to  Fra  Angelico's 
Crucifixion,  in  that  dusky  chamber  in  the  basement.  I  looked 
long;  one  can  hardly  do  otherwise.  The  fresco  deals  with  the 
pathetic  on  the  grand  scale,  and  after  taking  in  its  beauty  you 
feel  as  little  at  liberty  to*go  away  abruptly  as  you  would  to  leave 


ITALIAN  HOURS 

church  during  the  sermon.  You  may  be  as  little  of  a  formal 
Christian  as  Fra  Angelico  was  much  of  one ;  you  yet  feel  admon 
ished  by  spiritual  decency  to  let  so  yearning  a  view  of  the  Christian 
story  work  its  utmost  will  on  you.  The  three  crosses  rise  high 
against  a  strange  completely  crimson  sky,  which  deepens  mysteri 
ously  the  tragic  expression  of  the  scene,  though  I  remain  perforce 
vague  as  to  whether  this  lurid  background  be  a  fine  intended  piece 
of  symbolism  or  an  effective  accident  of  time.  In  the  first  case  the 
extravagance  quite  triumphs.  Between  the  crosses,  under  no  great 
rigour  of  composition,  are  scattered  the  most  exemplary  saints  — 
kneeling,  praying,  weeping,  pitying,  worshipping.  The  swoon  of 
the  Madonna  is  depicted  at  the  left,  and  this  gives  the  holy  pre 
sences,  in  respect  to  the  case,  the  strangest  historical  or  actual  air. 
Everything  is  so  real  that  you  feel  a  vague  impatience  and  almost 
ask  yourself  how  it  was  that  amid  the  army  of  his  consecrated 
servants  our  Lord  was  permitted  to  suffer.  On  reflection  you 
see  that  the  painter's  design,  so  far  as  coherent,  has  been  simply 
to  offer  an  immense  representation  of  Pity,  and  all  with  such 
concentrated  truth  that  his  colours  here  seem  dissolved  in  tears 
that  drop  and  drop,  however  softly,  through  all  time.  Of  this  sin 
gle  yearning  consciousness  the  figures  are  admirably  expressive. 
No  later  painter  learned  to  render  with  deeper  force  than  Fra 
Angelico  the  one  state  of  the  spirit  he  could  conceive  —  a  pas 
sionate  pious  tenderness.  Immured  in  his  quiet  convent,  he  ap 
parently  never  received  an  intelligible  impression  of  evil ;  and  his 
conception  of  human  life  was  a  perpetual  sense  of  sacredly  lov 
ing  and  being  loved.  But  how,  immured  in  his  quiet  convent, 

[408  ] 


FLORENTINE  NOTES 

away  from  the  streets  and  the  studios,  did  he  become  that  gen 
uine,  finished,  perfectly  professional  painter  ?  No  one  is  less  of 
a  mere  mawkish  amateur.  His  range  was  broad,  from  this  really 
heroic  fresco  to  the  little  trumpeting  seraphs,  in  their  opaline 
robes,  enamelled,  as  it  were,  on  the  gold  margins  of  his  pictures. 
I  sat  out  the  sermon  and  departed,  I  hope,  with  the  gentle 
preacher's  blessing.  I  went  into  the  smaller  refectory,  near  by, 
to  refresh  my  memory  of  the  beautiful  Last  Supper  of  Domenico 
Ghirlandaio.  It  would  be  putting  things  coarsely  to  say  that  I 
adjourned  thus  from  a  sermon  to  a  comedy,  though  Ghirlandaio's 
theme,  as  contrasted  with  the  blessed  Angelico's,  was  the  dra 
matic  spectacular  side  of  human  life.  How  keenly  he  observed  it 
and  how  richly  he  rendered  it,  the  world  about  him  of  colour  and 
costume,  of  handsome  heads  and  pictorial  groupings !  In  his  ad 
mirable  school  there  is  no  painter  one  enjoys  —  pace  Ruskin  — 
more  sociably  and  irresponsibly.  Lippo  Lippi  is  simpler,  quainter, 
more  frankly  expressive;  but  we  retain  before  him  a  remnant 
of  the  sympathetic  discomfort  provoked  by  the  masters  whose 
conceptions  were  still  a  trifle  too  large  for  their  means.  The 
pictorial  vision  in  their  minds  seems  to  stretch  and  strain  their 
undeveloped  skill  almost  to  a  sense  of  pain.  In  Ghirlandaio  the 
skill  and  the  imagination  are  equal,  and  he  gives  us  a  delight 
ful  impression  of  enjoying  his  own  resources.  Of  all  the  paint 
ers  of  his  time  he  affects  us  least  as  positively  not  of  ours.  He 
enjoyed  a  crimson  mantle  spreading  and  tumbling  in  curious 
folds  and  embroidered  with  needlework  of  gold,  just  as  he  en 
joyed  a  handsome  well-rounded  head,  with  vigorous  dusky  locks, 

[  409  1 


ITALIAN  HOURS 

profiled  in  courteous  adoration.  He  enjoyed  in  short  the  vari 
ous  reality  of  things,  and  had  the  good  fortune  to  live  in  an 
age  when  reality  flowered  into  a  thousand  amusing  graces  —  to 
speak  only  of  those.  He  was  not  especially  addicted  to  giving 
spiritual  hints;  and  yet  how  hard  and  meagre  they  seem,  the 
professed  and  finished  realists  of  our  own  day,  with  the  spiritual 
bonhomie  or  candour  that  makes  half  Ghirlandaio's  richness  left 
out !  The  Last  Supper  at  San  Marco  is  an  excellent  example  of 
the  natural  reverence  of  an  artist  of  that  time  with  whom  rever 
ence  was  not,  as  one  may  say,  a  specialty.  The  main  idea  with 
him  has  been  the  variety,  the  material  bravery  and  positively 
social  charm  of  the  scene,  which  finds  expression,  with  irrepressi 
ble  generosity,  in  the  accessories  of  the  background.  Instinctively 
he  imagines  an  opulent  garden  —  imagines  it  with  a  good  faith 
which  quite  tides  him  over  the  reflection  that  Christ  and  his  dis 
ciples  were  poor  men  and  unused  to  sit  at  meat  in  palaces.  Great 
full-fruited  orange-trees  peep  over  the  wall  before  which  the  table 
is  spread,  strange  birds  fly  through  the  air,  while  a  peacock  perches 
on  the  edge  of  the  partition  and  looks  down  on  the  sacred  repast. 
It  is  striking  that,  without  any  at  all  intense  religious  purpose,  the 
figures,  in  their  varied  naturalness,  have  a  dignity  and  sweetness 
of  attitude  that  admits  of  numberless  reverential  constructions. 
I  should  call  all  this  the  happy  tact  of  a  robust  faith. 

On  the  staircase  leading  up  to  the  little  painted  cells  of  the 
Beato  Angelico,  however,  I  suddenly  faltered  and  paused.  Some 
how  I  had  grown  averse  to  the  intenser  zeal  of  the  Monk  of 
Fiesole.  I  wanted  no  more  of  him  that  day.  I  wanted  no  more 


FLORENTINE  NOTES 

macerated  friars  and  spear-gashed  sides.  Ghirlandaio's  elegant 
way  of  telling  his  story  had  put  me  in  the  humour  for  something 
more  largely  intelligent,  more  profanely  pleasing.  I  departed , 
walked  across  the  square,  and  found  it  in  the  Academy,  standing 
in  a  particular  spot  and  looking  up  at  a  particular  high-hung 
picture.  It  is  difficult  to  speak  adequately,  perhaps  even  intelligi 
bly,  of  Sandro  Botticelli.  An  accomplished  critic  —  Mr.  Pater, 
in  his  Studies  on  the  History  of  the  Renaissance  —  has  lately 
paid  him  the  tribute  of  an  exquisite,  a  supreme,  curiosity.  He 
was  rarity  and  distinction  incarnate,  and  of  all  the  multitudi 
nous  masters  of  his  group  incomparably  the  most  interesting,  the 
one  who  detains  and  perplexes  and  fascinates  us  most.  Exqui 
sitely  fine  his  imagination  —  infinitely  audacious  and  adventur 
ous  his  fancy.  Alone  among  the  painters  of  his  time  he  strikes 
us  as  having  invention.  The  glow  and  thrill  of  expanding  obser 
vation  —  this  was  the  feeling  that  sent  his  comrades  to  their 
easels;  but  Botticelli's  moved  him  to  reactions  and  emotions  of 
which  they  knew  nothing,  caused  his  faculty  to  sport  and  wander 
and  explore  on  its  own  account.  These  impulses  have  fruits  often 
so  ingenious  and  so  lovely  that  it  would  be  easy  to  talk  nonsense 
about  them.  I  hope  it  is  not  nonsense,  however,  to  say  that  the 
picture  to  which  I  just  alluded  (the  "Coronation  of  the  Virgin," 
with  a  group  of  life-sized  saints  below  and  a  garland  of  minia 
ture  angels  above)  is  one  of  the  supremely  beautiful  productions 
of  the  human  mind.  It  is  hung  so  high  that  you  need  a  good 
glass  to  see  it;  to  say  nothing  of  the  unprecedented  delicacy  of 
the  work.  The  lower  half  is  of  moderate  interest ;  but  the  dance 


ITALIAN   HOURS 

of  hand-clasped  angels  round  the  heavenly  couple  above  has  a 
beauty  newly  exhaled  from  the  deepest  sources  of  inspiration. 
Their  perfect  little  hands  are  locked  with  ineffable  elegance ;  their 
blowing  robes  are  tossed  into  folds  of  which  each  line  is  a  study ; 
their  charming  feet  have  the  relief  of  the  most  delicate  sculpture. 
But,  as  I  have  already  noted,  of  Botticelli  there  is  much,  too 
much  to  say  —  besides  which  Mr.  Pater  has  said  all.  Only  add 
thus  to  his  inimitable  grace  of  design  that  the  exquisite  pictorial 
force  driving  him  goes  a-Maying  not  on  wanton  errands  of  its 
own,  but  on  those  of  some  mystic  superstition  which  trembles  for 
ever  in  his  heart. 


THE  more  I  look  at  the  old  Florentine  domestic  architecture  the 
more  I  like  it  —  that  of  the  great  examples  at  least ;  and  if  I  ever 
am  able  to  build  myself  a  lordly  pleasure-house  I  don't  see  how 
in  conscience  I  can  build  it  different  from  these.  They  are  som 
bre  and  frowning,  and  look  a  trifle  more  as  if  they  were  meant  to 
keep  people  out  than  to  let  them  in;  but  what  equally  "impor 
tant"  type  —  if  there  be  an  equally  important  —  is  more  express 
ive  of  domiciliary  dignity  and  security  and  yet  attests  them  with 
a  finer  aesthetic  economy?  They  are  impressively  "handsome," 
and  yet  contrive  to  be  so  by  the  simplest  means.  I  don't  say  at 
the  smallest  pecuniary  cost  —  that 's  another  matter.  There  is 
money  buried  in  the  thick  walls  and  diffused  through  the  echoing 
excess  of  space.  The  merchant  nobles  of  the  fifteenth  century 

Uia 1 


THK     GREAT     HAVES,     I-'l.ORKN'CK. 


FLORENTINE  NOTES 

had  deep  and  full  pockets,  I  suppose,  though  the  present  bearers 
of  their  names  are  glad  to  let  out  their  palaces  in  suites  of  apart 
ments  which  are  occupied  by  the  commercial  aristocracy  of  an 
other  republic.  One  is  told  of  fine  old  mouldering  chambers  of 
which  possession  is  to  be  enjoyed  for  a  sum  not  worth  mention 
ing.  I  am  afraid  that  behind  these  so  gravely  harmonious  fronts 
there  is  a  good  deal  of  dusky  discomfort,  and  I  speak  now  sim 
ply  of  the  large  serious  faces  themselves  as  you  can  see  them 
from  the  street ;  see  them  ranged  cheek  to  cheek,  in  the  grey  his 
toric  light  of  Via  dei  Bardi,  Via  Maggio,  Via  degli  Albizzi.  The 
force  of  character,  the  familiar  severity  and  majesty,  depend  on 
a  few  simple  features :  on  the  great  iron-caged  windows  of  the 
rough-hewn  basement;  on  the  noble  stretch  of  space  between  the 
summit  of  one  high,  round-topped  window  and  the  bottom  of 
that  above;  on  the  high-hung  sculptured  shield  at  the  angle  of  the 
house;  on  the  flat  far-projecting  roof;  and,  finally,  on  the  mag 
nificent  tallness  of  the  whole  building,  which  so  dwarfs  our  mod 
ern  attempts  at  size.  The  finest  of  these  Florentine  palaces  are,  I 
imagine,  the  tallest  habitations  in  Europe  that  are  frankly  and 
amply  habitations  —  not  mere  shafts  for  machinery  of  the  Ameri 
can  grain-elevator  pattern.  Some  of  the  creations  of  M.  Hauss- 
mann  in  Paris  may  climb  very  nearly  as  high ;  but  there  is  all  the 
difference  in  the  world  between  the  impressiveness  of  a  build 
ing  which  takes  breath,  as  it  were,  some  six  or  seven  times,  from 
storey  to  storey,  and  of  one  that  erects  itself  to  an  equal  height 
in  three  long-drawn  pulsations.  When  a  house  is  ten  windows 
wide  and  the  drawing-room  floor  is  as  high  as  a  chapel  it  can  af- 


ITALIAN  HOURS 

ford  but  three  floors.  The  spaciousness  of  some  of  those  ancient 
drawing-rooms  is  that  of  a  Russian  steppe.  The  "family  circle," 
gathered  anywhere  within  speaking  distance,  must  resemble  a 
group  of  pilgrims  encamped  in  the  desert  on  a  little  oasis  of 
carpet.  Madame  Gryzanowska,  living  at  the  top  of  a  house  in 
that  dusky,  tortuous  old  Borgo  Pinti,  initiated  me  the  other  even 
ing  most  good-naturedly,  lamp  in  hand,  into  the  far-spreading 
mysteries  of  her  apartment.  Such  quarters  seem  a  translation 
into  space  of  the  old-fashioned  idea  of  leisure.  Leisure  and 
"  room"  have  been  passing  out  of  our  manners  together,  but 
here  and  there,  being  of  stouter  structure,  the  latter  lingers  and 
survives. 

Here  and  there,  indeed,  in  this  blessed  Italy,  reluctantly  modern 
in  spite  alike  of  boasts  and  lamentations,  it  seems  to  have  been 
preserved  for  curiosity's  and  fancy's  sake,  with  a  vague,  sweet 
odour  of  the  embalmer's  spices  about  it.  I  went  the  other  morn 
ing  to  the  Corsini  Palace.  The  proprietors  obviously  are  great 
people.  One  of  the  ornaments  of  Rome  is  their  great  white- 
faced  palace  in  the  dark  Trastevere  and  its  voluminous  gallery, 
none  the  less  delectable  for  the  poorness  of  the  pictures.  Here  they 
have  a  palace  on  the  Arno,  with  another  large,  handsome,  respec 
table  and  mainly  uninteresting  collection.  It  contains  indeed 
three  or  four  fine  examples  of  early  Florentines.  It  was  not  espe 
cially  for  the  pictures  that  I  went,  however;  and  certainly  not 
for  the  pictures  that  I  stayed.  I  was  under  the  same  spell  as  the 
inveterate  companion  with  whom  I  walked  the  other  dav  through 
the  beautiful  private  apartments  of  the  Pitti  Palace  and  who  said : 


FLORENTINE  NOTES 

"I  suppose  I  care  for  nature,  and  I  know  there  have  been  times 
when  I  have  thought  it  the  greatest  pleasure  in  life  to  lie  under 
a  tree  and  gaze  away  at  blue  hills.  But  just  now  I  had  rather  lie 
on  that  faded  sea-green  satin  sofa  and  gaze  down  through  the 
open  door  at  that  retreating  vista  of  gilded,  deserted,  haunted 
chambers.  In  other  words  I  prefer  a  good  'interior*  to  a  good 
landscape.  The  impression  has  a  greater  intensity  —  the  thing 
itself  a  more  complex  animation.  I  like  fine  old  rooms  that  have 
been  occupied  in  a  fine  old  way.  I  like  the  musty  upholstery,  the 
antiquated  knick-knacks,  the  view  out  of  the  tall  deep-embrasured 
windows  at  garden  cypresses  rocking  against  a  grey  sky.  If  you 
don't  know  why,  I  'm  afraid  I  can't  tell  you."  It  seemed  to  me  at 
the  Palazzo  Corsini  that  I  did  know  why.  In  places  that  have 
been  lived  in  so  long  and  so  much  and  in  such  a  fine  old  way, 
as  my  friend  said  —  that  is  under  social  conditions  so  multifold 
and  to  a  comparatively  starved  and  democratic  sense  so  curious 
—  the  past  seems  to  have  left  a  sensible  deposit,  an  aroma,  an 
atmosphere.  This  ghostly  presence  tells  you  no  secrets,  but  it 
prompts  you  to  try  and  guess  a  few.  What  has  been  done  and 
said  here  through  so  many  years,  what  has  been  ventured  or 
suffered,  what  has  been  dreamed  or  despaired  of?  Guess  the 
riddle  if  you  can,  or  if  you  think  it  worth  your  ingenuity.  The 
rooms  at  Palazzo  Corsini  suggest  indeed,  and  seem  to  recall,  but 
a  monotony  of  peace  and  plenty.  One  of  them  imaged  such  a 
noble  perfection  of  a  home-scene  that  I  dawdled  there  until  the 
old  custodian  came  shuffling  back  to  see  whether  possibly  I  was 
trying  to  conceal  a  Carayaggio  about  my  person:  a  great  crim- 


ITALIAN  HOURS 

son-draped  drawing-room  of  the  amplest  and  yet  most  charming 
proportions ;  walls  hung  with  large  dark  pictures,  a  great  concave 
ceiling  frescoed  and  moulded  with  dusky  richness,  and  half-a- 
dozen  south  windows  looking  out  on  the  Arno,  whose  swift  yel 
low  tide  sends  up  the  light  in  a  cheerful  flicker.  I  fear  that  in 
my  appreciation  of  the  particular  effect  so  achieved  I  uttered  a 
monstrous  folly  —  some  momentary  willingness  to  be  maimed  or 
crippled  all  my  days  if  I  might  pass  them  in  such  a  place.  In 
fact  half  the  pleasure  of  inhabiting  this  spacious  saloon  would 
be  that  of  using  one's  legs,  of  strolling  up  and  down  past  the  win 
dows,  one  by  one,  and  making  desultory  journeys  from  station 
to  station  and  corner  to  corner.  Near  by  is  a  colossal  ball-room, 
domed  and  pilastered  like  a  Renaissance  cathedral,  and  super 
abundantly  decorated  with  marble  effigies,  all  yellow  and  grey 
with  the  years. 


VI 


IN  the  Carthusian  Monastery  outside  the  Roman  Gate,  muti 
lated  and  profaned  though  it  is,  one  may  still  snuff  up  a  strong 
if  stale  redolence  of  old  Catholicism  and  old  Italy.  The  road  to 
it  is  ugly,  being  encumbered  with  vulgar  waggons  and  fringed 
with  tenements  suggestive  of  an  Irish-American  suburb.  Your 
interest  begins  as  you  come  in  sight  of  the  convent  perched  on  its 
little  mountain  and  lifting  against  the  sky,  around  the  bell-tower 
of  its  gorgeous  chapel,  a  coronet  of  clustered  cells.  You  make 

[416  ] 


FLORENTINE   NOTES 

your  way  into  the  lower  gate,  through  a  clamouring  press  of 
deformed  beggars  who  thrust  at  you  their  stumps  of  limbs,  and 
you  climb  the  steep  hillside  through  a  shabby  plantation  which  it 
is  proper  to  fancy  was  better  tended  in  the  monkish  time.  The 
monks  are  not  totally  abolished,  the  government  having  the  grace 
to  await  the  natural  extinction  of  the  half-dozen  old  brothers 
who  remain,  and  who  shuffle  doggedly  about  the  cloisters,  look 
ing,  with  their  white  robes  and  their  pale  blank  old  faces,  quite 
anticipatory  ghosts  of  their  future  selves.  A  prosaic,  profane  old 
man  in  a  coat  and  trousers  serves  you,  however,  as  custodian. 
The  melancholy  friars  have  not  even  the  privilege  of  doing  you 
the  honours  of  their  dishonour.  One  must  imagine  the  pathetic 
effect  of  their  former  silent  pointings  to  this  and  that  conventual 
treasure  under  stress  of  the  feeling  that  such  pointings  were  nar 
rowly  numbered.  The  convent  is  vast  and  irregular  —  it  bristles 
with  those  picture-making  arts  and  accidents  which  one  notes 
as  one  lingers  and  passes,  but  which  in  Italy  the  overburdened 
memory  learns  to  resolve  into  broadly  general  images.  I  rather 
deplore  its  position  at  the  gates  of  a  bustling  city  —  it  ought 
rather  to  be  lodged  in  some  lonely  fold  of  the  Apennines.  And 
yet  to  look  out  from  the  shady  porch  of  one  of  the  quiet  cells 
upon  the  teeming  vale  of  the  Arno  and  the  clustered  towers  of 
Florence  must  have  deepened  the  sense  of  monastic  quietude. 

The  chapel,  or  rather  the  church,  which  is  of  great  proportions 
and  designed  by  Andrea  Orcagna,  the  primitive  painter,  refines 
upon  the  consecrated  type  or  even  quite  glorifies  it.    The  mas 
sive  cincture  of  black  sculptured  stalls,  the  dusky  Gothic  roof, 
* 


ITALIAN  HOURS 

the  high-hung,  deep-toned  pictures  and  the  superb  pavement  of 
verd-antique  and  dark  red  marble,  polished  into  glassy  lights, 
must  throw  the  white-robed  figures  of  the  gathered  friars  into  the 
highest  romantic  relief.  All  this  luxury  of  worship  has  nowhere 
such  value  as  in  the  chapels  of  monasteries,  where  we  find  it 
contrasted  with  the  otherwise  so  ascetic  economy  of  the  wor 
shippers.  The  paintings  and  gildings  of  their  church,  the  gem- 
bright  marbles  and  fantastic  carvings,  are  really  but  the  monastic 
tribute  to  sensuous  delight  —  an  imperious  need  for  which  the 
fond  imagination  of  Rome  has  officiously  opened  the  door.  One 
smiles  when  one  thinks  how  largely  a  fine  starved  sense  for  the 
forbidden  things  of  earth,  if  it  makes  the  most  of  its  opportuni 
ties,  may  gratify  this  need  under  cover  of  devotion.  Nothing  is 
too  base,  too  hard,  too  sordid  for  real  humility,  but  nothing  too 
elegant,  too  amiable,  too  caressing,  caressed,  caressable,  for  the 
exaltation  of  faith.  The  meaner  the  convent  cell  the  richer  the 
convent  chapel.  Out  of  poverty  and  solitude,  inanition  and  cold, 
your  honest  friar  may  rise  at  his  will  into  a  Mahomet's  Paradise 
of  luxurious  analogies. 

There  are  further  various  dusky  subterranean  oratories  where 
a  number  of  bad  pictures  contend  faintly  with  the  friendly  gloom. 
Two  or  three  of  these  funereal  vaults,  however,  deserve  mention. 
In  one  of  them,  side  by  side,  sculptured  by  Donatello  in  low  re 
lief,  lie  the  white  marble  effigies  of  the  three  members  of  the  Accai- 
uoli  family  who  founded  the  convent  in  the  thirteenth  century. 
In  another,  on  his  back,  on  the  pavement,  rests  a  grim  old  bishop 
of  the  same  stout  race  by  the  same  honest  craftsman.  Terribly 

[418  ] 


FLORENTINE  NOTES 

grim  he  is,  and  scowling  as  if  in  his  stony  sleep  he  still  dreamed  of 
his  hates  and  his  hard  ambitions.  Last  and  best,  in  another  low 
chapel,  with  the  trodden  pavement  for  its  bed,  shines  dimly  a 
grand  image  of  a  later  bishop  —  Leonardo  Buonafede,  who,  dying 
in  1545,  owes  his  monument  to  Francesco  di  San  Gallo.  I  have 
seen  little  from  this  artist's  hand,  but  it  was  clearly  of  the  cun- 
ningest.  His  model  here  was  a  very  sturdy  old  prelate,  though  I 
should  say  a  very  genial  old  man.  The  sculptor  has  respected  his 
monumental  ugliness,  but  has  suffused  it  with  a  singular  homely 
charm  —  a  look  of  confessed  physical  comfort  in  the  privilege  of 
paradise.  All  these  figures  have  an  inimitable  reality,  and  their 
lifelike  marble  seems  such  an  incorruptible  incarnation  of  the 
genius  of  the  place  that  you  begin  to  think  of  it  as  even  more 
reckless  than  cruel  on  the  part  of  the  present  public  powers  to 
have  begun  to  pull  the  establishment  down,  morally  speaking, 
about  their  ears.  They  are  lying  quiet  yet  a  while ;  but  when  the 
last  old  friar  dies  and  the  convent  formally  lapses,  won't  they  rise 
on  their  stiff  old  legs  and  hobble  out  to  the  gates  and  thunder 
forth  anathemas  before  which  even  a  future  and  more  enter 
prising  regime  may  be  disposed  to  pause  ? 

Out  of  the  great  central  cloister  open  the  snug  little  detached 
dwellings  of  the  absent  fathers.  When  I  said  just  now  that  the 
Certosa  in  Val  d'  Ema  gives  you  a  glimpse  of  old  Italy  I  was  think 
ing  of  this  great  pillared  quadrangle,  lying  half  in  sun  and  half 
in  shade,  of  its  tangled  garden-growth  in  the  centre,  surrounding 
the  ancient  customary  well,  and  of  the  intense  blue  sky  bending 
above  it,  to  say  nothing  of  the  indispensable  old  white-robed 

[4-9  ] 


ITALIAN  HOURS 

monk  who  pokes  about  among  the  lettuce  and  parsley.  We  have 
seen  such  places  before ;  we  have  visited  them  in  that  divinatory 
glance  which  strays  away  into  space  for  a  moment  over  the  top 
of  a  suggestive  book.  I  don't  quite  know  whether  it's  more  or  less 
as  one's  fancy  would  have  it  that  the  monkish  cells  are  no  cells 
at  all,  but  very  tidy  little  appartements  complets,  consisting  of  a 
couple  of  chambers,  a  sitting-room  and  a  spacious  loggia,  pro 
jecting  out  into  space  from  the  cliff -like  wall  of  the  monastery  and 
sweeping  from  pole  to  pole  the  loveliest  view  in  the  world.  It's 
poor  work,  however,  taking  notes  on  views,  and  I  will  let  this 
one  pass.  The  little  chambers  are  terribly  cold  and  musty  now. 
Their  odour  and  atmosphere  are  such  as  one  used,  as  a  child,  to 
imagine  those  of  the  school-room  during  Saturday  and  Sunday. 


VII 


IN  the  Roman  streets,  wherever  you  turn,  the  facade  of  a  church 
in  more  or  less  degenerate  flamboyance  is  the  principal  feature 
of  the  scene ;  and  if,  in  the  absence  of  purer  motives,  you  are 
weary  of  aesthetic  trudging  over  the  corrugated  surface  of  the 
Seven  Hills,  a  system  of  pavement  in  which  small  cobble-stones 
anomalously  endowed  with  angles  and  edges  are  alone  employed, 
you  may  turn  aside  at  your  pleasure  and  take  a  reviving  sniff  at 
the  pungency  of  incense.  In  Florence,  one  soon  observes,  the 
churches  are  relatively  few  and  the  dusky  house-fronts  more 
rarely  interrupted  by  specimens  of  that  extraordinary  architecture 

[420] 


FLORENTINE   NOTES 

which  in  Rome  passes  for  sacred.  In  Florence,  in  other  words, 
ecclesiasticism  is  less  cheap  a  commodity  and  not  dispensed  in 
the  same  abundance  at  the  street-corners.  Heaven  forbid,  at  the 
same  time,  that  I  should  undervalue  the  Roman  churches,  which 
are  for  the  most  part  treasure-houses  of  history,  of  curiosity,  of 
promiscuous  and  associational  interest.  It  is  a  fact,  nevertheless, 
that,  after  St.  Peter's,  I  know  but  one  really  beautiful  church 
by  the  Tiber,  the  enchanting  basilica  of  St.  Mary  Major.  Many 
have  structural  character,  some  a  great  allure,  but  as  a  rule  they 
all  lack  the  dignity  of  the  best  of  the  Florentine  temples.  Here, 
the  list  being  immeasurably  shorter  and  the  seed  less  scattered, 
the  principal  churches  are  all  beautiful.  And  yet  I  went  into  the 
Annunziata  the  other  day  and  sat  there  for  half-an-hour  because, 
forsooth,  the  gildings  and  the  marbles  and  the  frescoed  dome 
and  the  great  rococo  shrine  near  the  door,  with  its  little  black  jew 
elled  fetish,  reminded  me  so  poignantly  of  Rome.  Such  is  the  city 
properly  styled  eternal  —  since  it  is  eternal,  at  least,  as  regards 
the  consciousness  of  the  individual.  One  loves  it  in  its  sophisti 
cations —  though  for  that  matter  isn't  it  all  rich  and  precious 
sophistication  ?  —  better  than  other  places  in  their  purity. 

Coming  out  of  the  Annunziata  you  look  past  the  bronze 
statue  of  the  Grand  Duke  Ferdinand  I  (whom  Mr.  Browning's 
heroine  used  to  watch  for — in  the  poem  of  "The  Statue  and  the 
Bust"  —from  the  red  palace  near  by),  and  down  a  street  vista 
of  enchanting  picturesqueness.  The  street  is  narrow  and  dusky 
and  filled  with  misty  shadows,  and  at  its  opposite  end  rises  the 
vast  bright-coloured  side  of  the  Cathedral.  It  stands  up  in  very 


ITALIAN  HOURS 

much  the  same  mountainous  fashion  as  the  far-shining  mass  of 
the  bigger  prodigy  at  Milan,  of  which  your  first  glimpse  as  you 
leave  your  hotel  is  generally  through  another  such  dark  avenue ; 
only  that,  if  we  talk  of  mountains,  the  white  walls  of  Milan  must  be 
likened  to  snow  and  ice  from  their  base,  while  those  of  the  Duomo 
of  Florence  may  be  the  image  of  some  mighty  hillside  enamelled 
with  blooming  flowers.  The  big  bleak  interior  here  has  a  naked 
majesty  which,  though  it  may  fail  of  its  effect  at  first,  becomes 
after  a  while  extraordinarily  touching.  Originally  disconcerting, 
it  soon  inspired  me  with  a  passion.  Externally,  at  any  rate,  it  is 
one  of  the  loveliest  works  of  man's  hands,  and  an  overwhelming 
proof  into  the  bargain  that  when  elegance  belittles  grandeur  you 
have  simply  had  a  bungling  artist. 

Santa  Croce  within  not  only  triumphs  here,  but  would  triumph 
anywhere.  "A  trifle  naked  if  you  like,"  said  my  irrepressible 
companion,  "but  that's  what  I  call  architecture,  just  as  I  don't 
call  bronze  or  marble  clothes  (save  under  urgent  stress  of  por 
traiture)  statuary."  And  indeed  we  are  far  enough  away  from 
the  clustering  odds  and  ends  borrowed  from  every  art  and  every 
province  without  which  the  ritually  builded  thing  does  n't  trust 
its  spell  to  work  in  Rome.  The  vastness,  the  lightness,  the  open 
spring  of  the  arches  at  Santa  Croce,  the  beautiful  shape  of  the 
high  and  narrow  choir,  the  impression  made  as  of  mass  without 
weight  and  the  gravity  yet  reigning  without  gloom  —  these  are 
my  frequent  delight,  and  the  interest  grows  with  acquaintance. 
The  place  is  the  great  Florentine  Valhalla,  the  final  home  or 
memorial  harbour  of  the  native  illustrious  dead,  but  that  consid- 


FLORENTINE  NOTES 

eration  of  it  would  take  me  far.  It  must  be  confessed  moreover 
that,  between  his  coarsely-imagined  statue  out  in  front  and  his 
horrible  monument  in  one  of  the  aisles,  the  author  of  The  Divine 
Comedy,  for  instance,  is  just  hereabouts  rather  an  extravagant 
figure.  " Ungrateful  Florence,"  declaims  Byron.  Ungrateful  in 
deed  —  would  she  were  more  so !  the  susceptible  spirit  of  the 
great  exile  may  be  still  aware  enough  to  exclaim ;  in  common,  that 
is,  with  most  of  the  other  immortals  sacrificed  on  so  very  large 
a  scale  to  current  Florentine  "plastic"  facility.  In  explanation  of 
which  remark,  however,  I  must  confine  myself  to  noting  that, 
as  almost  all  the  old  monuments  at  Santa  Croce  are  small,  com 
paratively  small,  and  interesting  and  exquisite,  so  the  modern, 
well  nigh  without  exception,  are  disproportionately  vast  and 
pompous,  or  in  other  words  distressingly  vague  and  vain.  The 
aptitude  of  hand,  the  compositional  assurance,  with  which  such 
things  are  nevertheless  turned  out,  constitutes  an  anomaly  re 
plete  with  suggestion  for  an  observer  of  the  present  state  of  the 
arts  on  the  soil  and  in  the  air  that  once  befriended  them,  taking 
them  all  together,  as  even  the  soil  and  the  air  of  Greece  scarce 
availed  to  do.  But  on  this  head,  I  repeat,  there  would  be  too 
much  to  say;  and  I  find  myself  checked  by  the  same  warning  at 
the  threshold  of  the  church  in  Florence  really  interesting  beyond 
Santa  Croce,  beyond  all  others.  Such,  of  course,  easily,  is  Santa 
Maria  Novella,  where  the  chapels  are  lined  and  plated  with 
wonderful  figured  and  peopled  fresco-work  even  as  most  of  those 
in  Rome  with  precious  inanimate  substances.  These  overscored 
retreats  of  devotion,  as  dusky,  some  of  them,  as  eremitic  caves 

[423] 


ITALIAN  HOURS 

swarming  with  importunate  visions,  have  kept  me  divided  all 
winter  between  the  love  of  Ghirlandaio  and  the  fear  of  those 
seeds  of  catarrh  to  which  their  mortal  chill  seems  propitious  till 
far  on  into  the  spring.  So  I  pause  here  just  on  the  praise  of  that 
delightful  painter  —  as  to  the  spirit  of  whose  work  the  reflections 
I  have  already  made  are  but  confirmed  by  these  examples.  In 
the  choir  at  Santa  Maria  Novella,  where  the  incense  swings  and 
the  great  chants  resound,  between  the  gorgeous  coloured  window 
and  the  florid  grand  altar,  he  still  "goes  in,"  with  all  his  might, 
for  the  wicked,  the  amusing  world,  the  world  of  faces  and  forms 
and  characters,  of  every  sort  of  curious  human  and  rare  material 
thing. 


VIII 


I  HAD  always  felt  the  Boboli  Gardens  charming  enough  for  me 
to  "haunt"  them;  and  yet  such  is  the  interest  of  Florence  in 
every  quarter  that  it  took  another  corso  of  the  same  cheap  pat 
tern  as  the  last  to  cause  me  yesterday  to  flee  the  crowded  streets, 
passing  under  that  archway  of  the  Pitti  Palace  which  might 
almost  be  the  gate  of  an  Etruscan  city,  so  that  I  might  spend 
the  afternoon  among  the  mouldy  statues  that  compose  with  their 
screens  of  cypress,  looking  down  at  our  clustered  towers  and  our 
background  of  pale  blue  hills  vaguely  freckled  with  white  villas. 
These  pleasure-grounds  of  the  austere  Pitti  pile,  with  its  incon 
sequent  charm  of  being  so  rough-hewn  and  yet  somehow  so  ele 
gantly  balanced,  plead  with  a  voice  all  their  own  the  general  cause 

[424] 


BOI',01.1     GAKDKN.     1-I.OKKNCK. 


FLORENTINE   NOTES 

of  the  ample  enclosed,  planted,  cultivated  private  preserve  —  pre 
serve  of  tranquillity  and  beauty  and  immunity  —  in  the  heart  of 
a  city ;  a  cause,  I  allow,  for  that  matter,  easy  to  plead  anywhere, 
once  the  pretext  is  found,  the  large,  quiet,  distributed  town-garden, 
with  the  vague  hum  of  big  grudging  boundaries  all  about  it,  but 
with  everything  worse  excluded,  being  of  course  the  most  inso 
lently-pleasant  thing  in  the  world.  In  addition  to  which,  when 
the  garden  is  in  the  Italian  manner,  with  flowers  rather  remark 
ably  omitted,  as  too  flimsy  and  easy  and  cheap,  and  without  lawns 
that  are  too  smart,  paths  that  are  too  often  swept  and  shrubs 
that  are  too  closely  trimmed,  though  with  a  fanciful  formalism 
giving  style  to  its  shabbiness,  and  here  and  there  a  dusky  ilex- 
walk,  and  here  and  there  a  dried-up  fountain,  and  everywhere 
a  piece  of  mildewed  sculpture  staring  at  you  from  a  green  alcove, 
and  just  in  the  right  place,  above  all,  a  grassy  amphitheatre  cur 
tained  behind  with  black  cypresses  and  sloping  downward  in 
mossy  marble  steps  —  when,  I  say,  the  place  possesses  these  at 
tractions,  and  you  lounge  there  of  a  soft  Sunday  afternoon,  the 
racier  spectacle  of  the  streets  having  made  your  fellow-loungers 
few  and  left  you  to  the  deep  stillness  and  the  shady  vistas  that 
lead  you  wonder  where,  left  you  to  the  insidious  irresistible  mix 
ture  of  nature  and  art,  nothing  too  much  of  either,  only  a  supreme 
happy  resultant,  a  divine  tertium  quid:  under  these  conditions, 
it  need  scarce  be  said  the  revelation  invoked  descends  upon  you. 
The  Boboli  Gardens  are  not  large  —  you  wonder  how  compact 
little  Florence  finds  room  for  them  within  her  walls.  But  they 
are  scattered,  to  their  extreme,  their  all-romantic  advantage  and 

[425] 


ITALIAN  HOURS 

felicity,  over  a  group  of  steep  undulations  between  the  rugged 
and  terraced  palace  and  a  still-surviving  stretch  of  city  wall, 
where  the  unevenness  of  the  ground  much  adds  to  their  apparent 
size.  You  may  cultivate  in  them  the  fancy  of  their  solemn  and 
haunted  character,  of  something  faint  and  dim  and  even,  if  you 
like,  tragic,  in  their  prescribed,  their  functional  smile ;  as  if  they 
borrowed  from  the  huge  monument  that  overhangs  them  certain 
of  its  ponderous  memories  and  regrets.  This  course  is  open  to 
you,  I  mention,  but  it  is  n't  enjoined,  and  will  doubtless  indeed 
not  come  up  for  you  at  all  if  it  is  n't  your  habit,  cherished  beyond 
any  other,  to  spin  your  impressions  to  the  last  tenuity  of  fine 
ness.  Now  that  I  bethink  myself  I  must  always  have  happened 
to  wander  here  on  grey  and  melancholy  days.  It  remains  none 
the  less  true  that  the  place  contains,  thank  goodness  —  or  at 
least  thank  the  grave,  the  infinitely-distinguished  traditional  taste 
of  Florence  —  no  cheerful,  trivial  object,  neither  parterres,  nor 
pagodas,  nor  peacocks,  nor  swans.  They  have  their  famous  am 
phitheatre  already  referred  to,  with  its  degrees  or  stone  benches 
of  a  thoroughly  aged  and  mottled  complexion  and  its  circular  wall 
of  evergreens  behind,  in  which  small  cracked  images  and  vases, 
things  that,  according  to  association,  and  with  the  law  of  the 
same  quite  indefinable,  may  make  as  much  on  one  occasion  for 
exquisite  dignity  as  they  may  make  on  another  for  (to  express 
it  kindly)  nothing  at  all.  Something  was  once  done  in  this  charmed 
and  forsaken  circle  —  done  or  meant  to  be  done ;  what  was  it, 
dumb  statues,  who  saw  it  with  your  blank  eyes  ?  Opposite  stands 
the  huge  flat-roofed  palace,  putting  forward  two  great  rectan- 

[426] 


FLORENTINE   NOTES 

gular  arms  and  looking,  with  its  closed  windows  and  its  founda 
tions  of  almost  unreduced  rock,  like  some  ghost  of  a  sample  of 
a  ruder  Babylon.  In  the  wide  court-like  space  between  the  wings 
is  a  fine  old  white  marble  fountain  that  never  plays.  Its  dusty  idle 
ness  completes  the  general  air  of  abandonment.  Chancing  on 
such  a  cluster  of  objects  in  Italy  —  glancing  at  them  in  a  certain 
light  and  a  certain  mood  —  I  get  (perhaps  on  too  easy  terms,  you 
may  think)  a  sense  of  history  that  takes  away  my  breath.  Gen 
erations  of  Medici  have  stood  at  these  closed  windows,  embroi 
dered  and  brocaded  according  to  their  period,  and  held  fetes 
champetres  and  floral  games  on  the  greensward,  beneath  the 
mouldering  hemicycle.  And  the  Medici  were  great  people !  But 
what  remains  of  it  all  now  is  a  mere  tone  in  the  air,  a  faint  sigh 
in  the  breeze,  a  vague  expression  in  things,  a  passive  —  or  call 
it  rather,  perhaps,  to  be  fair,  a  shyly,  pathetically  responsive  - 
accessibility  to  the  yearning  guess.  Call  it  much  or  call  it  little, 
the  ineffaceability  of  this  deep  stain  of  experience,  it  is  the  inter 
est  of  old  places  and  the  bribe  to  the  brooding  analyst.  Time  has 
devoured  the  doers  and  their  doings,  but  there  still  hangs  about 
some  effect  of  their  passage.  We  can  "lay  out"  parks  on  virgin 
soil,  and  cause  them  to  bristle  with  the  most  expensive  importa 
tions,  but  we  unfortunately  can't  scatter  abroad  again  this  seed 
of  the  eventual  human  soul  of  a  place  —  that  comes  but  in  its 
time  and  takes  too  long  to  grow.  There  is  nothing  like  it  when 
it  has  come. 


TUSCAN  CITIES 


TUSCAN  CITIES 


HE  cities  I  refer  to  are  Leghorn,  Pisa, 
Lucca  and  Pistoia,  among  which  I  have 
been  spending  the  last  few  days.  The 
most  striking  fact  as  to  Leghorn,  it  must 
be  conceded  at  the  outset,  is  that,  being 
in  Tuscany,  it  should  be  so  scantily 
Tuscan.  The  traveller  curious  in  local 
colour  must  content  himself  with  the 
deep  blue  expanse  of  the  Mediterranean.  The  streets,  away 
from  the  docks,  are  modern,  genteel  and  rectangular;  Liverpool 
might  acknowledge  them  if  it  were  n't  for  their  clean-coloured, 
sun-bleached  stucco.  They  are  the  offspring  of  the  new  industry 
which  is  death  to  the  old  idleness.  Of  interesting  architecture, 
fruit  of  the  old  idleness  or  at  least  of  the  old  leisure,  Leghorn  is 
singularly  destitute.  It  has  neither  a  church  worth  one's  atten 
tion,  nor  a  municipal  palace,  nor  a  museum,  and  it  may  claim 
the  distinction,  unique  in  Italy,  of  being  the  city  of  no  pictures. 
In  a  shabby  corner  near  the  docks  stands  a  statue  of  one  of  the 
elder  Grand  Dukes  of  Tuscany,  appealing  to  posterity  on  grounds 
now  vague  —  chiefly  that  of  having  placed  certain  Moors  under 
tribute.  Four  colossal  negroes,  in  very  bad  bronze,  are  chained 
to  the  base  of  the  monument,  which  forms  with  their  assistance 

[431 1 


ITALIAN  HOURS 

a  sufficiently  fantastic  group ;  but  to  patronise  the  arts  is  not  the 
line  of  the  Livornese,  and  for  want  of  the  slender  annuity  which 
would  keep  its  precinct  sacred  this  curious  memorial  is  buried 
in  dockyard  rubbish.  I  must  add  that  on  the  other  hand  there 
is  a  very  well-conditioned  and,  in  attitude  and  gesture,  extremely 
natural  and  familiar  statue  of  Cavour  in  one  of  the  city  squares, 
and  in  another  a  couple  of  effigies  of  recent  Grand  Dukes,  repre 
sented,  that  is  dressed,  or  rather  undressed,  in  the  character  of 
heroes  of  Plutarch.  Leghorn  is  a  city  of  magnificent  spaces,  and 
it  was  so  long  a  journey  from  the  sidewalk  to  the  pedestal  of 
these  images  that  I  never  took  the  time  to  go  and  read  the  inscrip 
tions.  And  in  truth,  vaguely,  I  bore  the  originals  a  grudge,  and 
wished  to  know  as  little  about  them  as  possible;  for  it  seemed 
to  me  that  as  patres  patria,  in  their  degree,  they  might  have  de 
creed  that  the  great  blank,  ochre-faced  piazza  should  be  a  trifle 
less  ugly.  There  is  a  distinct  amenity,  however,  in  any  experience 
of  Italy  almost  anywhere,  and  I  shall  probably  in  the  future  not 
be  above  sparing  a  light  regret  to  several  of  the  hours  of  which 
the  one  I  speak  of  was  composed.  I  shall  remember  a  large  cool 
bourgeois  villa  in  the  garden  of  a  noiseless  suburb  —  a  middle- 
aged  Villa  Franco  (I  owe  it  as  a  genial  pleasant  pension  the  tribute 
of  recognition),  roomy  and  stony,  as  an  Italian  villa  should  be. 
I  shall  remember  that,  as  I  sat  in  the  garden,  and,  looking  up 
from  my  book,  saw  through  a  gap  in  the  shrubbery  the  red  house- 
tiles  against  the  deep  blue  sky  and  the  grey  underside  of  the  ilex- 
leaves  turned  up  by  the  Mediterranean  breeze,  it  was  all  still 
quite  Tuscany,  if  Tuscany  in  the  minor  key. 

[432] 


TUSCAN   CITIES 

If  you  should  naturally  desire,  in  such  conditions,  a  higher 
intensity,  you  have  but  to  proceed,  by  a  very  short  journey,  to 
Pisa  —  where,  for  that  matter,  you  will  seem  to  yourself  to  have 
hung  about  a  good  deal  already,  and  from  an  early  age.  Few 
of  us  can  have  had  a  childhood  so  unblessed  by  contact  with 
the  arts  as  that  one  of  its  occasional  diversions  shan't  have  been 
a  puzzled  scrutiny  of  some  alabaster  model  of  the  Leaning  Tower 
under  a  glass  cover  in  a  back-parlour.  Pisa  and  its  monuments 
have,  in  other  words,  been  industriously  vulgarised,  but  it  is  aston 
ishing  how  well  they  have  survived  the  process.  The  charm  of 
the  place  is  in  fact  of  a  high  order  and  but  partially  foreshadowed 
by  the  famous  crookedness  of  its  campanile.  I  felt  it  irresistibly 
and  yet  almost  inexpressibly  the  other  afternoon,  as  I  made  my 
way  to  the  classic  corner  of  the  city  through  the  warm  drowsy 
air  which  nervous  people  come  to  inhale  as  a  sedative.  I  was  with 
an  invalid  companion  who  had  had  no  sleep  to  speak  of  for  a 
fortnight.  "  Ah!  stop  the  carriage,"  she  sighed,  or  yawned,  as  I 
could  feel,  deliciously,  "  in  the  shadow  of  this  old  slumbering 
palazzo,  and  let  me  sit  here  and  close  my  eyes,  and  taste  for  an 
hour  of  oblivion."  Once  strolling  over  the  grass,  however,  out 
of  which  the  quartette  of  marble  monuments  rises,  we  awaked 
responsively  enough  to  the  present  hour.  Most  people  remember 
the  happy  remark  of  tasteful,  old-fashioned  Forsyth  (who  touched 
a  hundred  other  points  in  his  "Italy"  scarce  less  happily)  as  to 
the  fact  that  the  four  famous  objects  are  "fortunate  alike  in  their 
society  and  their  solitude."  It  must  be  admitted  that  they  are 
more  fortunate  in  their  society  than  we  felt  ourselves  to  be  in 

[433] 


ITALIAN   HOURS 

ours;  for  the  scene  presented  the  animated  appearance  for  which, 
on  any  fine  spring  day,  all  the  choicest  haunts  of  ancient  quietude 
in  Italy  are  becoming  yearly  more  remarkable.  There  were  clam 
orous  beggars  at  all  the  sculptured  portals,  and  bait  for  beggars, 
in  abundance,  trailing  in  and  out  of  them  under  convoy  of  loqua 
cious  ciceroni.  I  forget  just  how  I  apportioned  the  responsibility 
of  intrusion,  for  it  was  not  long  before  fellow-tourists  and  fellow- 
countrymen  became  a  vague,  deadened,  muffled  presence,  that 
of  the  dentist's  last  words  when  he  is  giving  you  ether.  They 
suffered  mystic  disintegration  in  the  dense,  bright,  tranquil  air, 
so  charged  with  its  own  messages.  The  Cathedral  and  its  com 
panions  are  fortunate  indeed  in  everything  —  fortunate  in  the 
spacious  angle  of  the  grey  old  city-wall  which  folds  about  them  in 
their  sculptured  elegance  like  a  strong  protecting  arm ;  fortunate 
in  the  broad  greensward  which  stretches  from  the  marble  base  of 
Cathedral  and  cemetery  to  the  rugged  foot  of  the  rampart ;  fortu 
nate  in  the  little  vagabonds  who  dot  the  grass,  plucking  daisies 
and  exchanging  Italian  cries ;  fortunate  in  the  pale-gold  tone  to 
which  time  and  the  soft  sea-damp  have  mellowed  and  darkened 
their  marble  plates ;  fortunate,  above  all,  in  an  indescribable  grace 
of  grouping,  half  hazard,  half  design,  which  insures  them,  in  one's 
memory  of  things  admired,  very  much  the  same  isolated  corner 
that  they  occupy  in  the  charming  city. 

Of  the  smaller  cathedrals  of  Italy  I  know  none  I  prefer  to 
that  of  Pisa ;  none  that,  on  a  moderate  scale,  produces  more  the 
impression  of  a  great  church.  It  has  without  so  modest  a  mea- 
surability,  represents  so  clean  and  compact  a  mass,  that  you  are 

[434] 


TUSCAN   CITIES 

startled  when  you  cross  the  threshold  at  the  apparent  space  it 
encloses.  An  architect  of  genius,  for  all  that  he  works  with  colos 
sal  blocks  and  cumbrous  pillars,  is  certainly  the  most  cunning  of 
conjurors.  The  front  of  the  Duomo  is  a  small  pyramidal  screen, 
covered  with  delicate  carvings  and  chasings,  distributed  over  a 
series  of  short  columns  upholding  narrow  arches.  It  might  be 
a  sought  imitation  of  goldsmith's  work  in  stone,  and  the  area  cov 
ered  is  apparently  so  small  that  extreme  fineness  has  been  pre 
scribed.  How  it  is  therefore  that  on  the  inner  side  of  this  facade 
the  wall  should  appear  to  rise  to  a  splendid  height  and  to  support 
one  end  of  a  ceiling  as  remote  in  its  gilded  grandeur,  one  could 
almost  fancy,  as  that  of  St.  Peter's ;  how  it  is  that  the  nave  should 
stretch  away  in  such  solemn  vastness,  the  shallow  transepts  em 
phasise  the  grand  impression  and  the  apse  of  the  choir  hollow 
itself  out  like  a  dusky  cavern  fretted  with  golden  stalactites,  is  all 
matter  for  exposition  by  a  keener  architectural  analyst  than  I. 
To  sit  somewhere  against  a  pillar  where  the  vista  is  large  and 
the  incidents  cluster  richly,  and  vaguely  revolve  these  mysteries 
without  answering  them,  is  the  best  of  one's  usual  enjoyment  of 
a  great  church.  It  takes  no  deep  sounding  to  conclude  indeed 
that  a  gigantic  Byzantine  Christ  in  mosaic,  on  the  concave  roof 
of  the  choir,  contributes  largely  to  the  particular  impression  here 
as  of  very  old  and  choice  and  original  and  individual  things. 
It  has  even  more  of  stiff  solemnity  than  is  common  to  works  of  its 
school,  and  prompts  to  more  wonder  than  ever  on  the  nature 
of  the  human  mind  at  a  time  when  such  unlovely  shapes  could 
satisfy  its  conception  of  holiness.  Truly  pathetic  is  the  fate  of  these 

[435] 


ITALIAN  HOURS 

huge  mosaic  idols,  thanks  to  the  change  that  has  overtaken  our 
manner  of  acceptance  of  them.  Strong  the  contrast  between  the 
original  sublimity  of  their  pretensions  and  the  way  in  which  they 
flatter  that  free  sense  of  the  grotesque  which  the  modern  imagina 
tion  has  smuggled  even  into  the  appreciation  of  religious  forms. 
They  were  meant  to  yield  scarcely  to  the  Deity  itself  in  grandeur, 
but  the  only  part  they  play  now  is  to  stare  helplessly  at  our  crit 
ical,  our  aesthetic  patronage  of  them.  The  spiritual  refinement 
marking  the  hither  end  of  a  progress  had  n't,  however,  to  wait  for 
us  to  signalise  it;  it  found  expression  three  centuries  ago  in  the 
beautiful  specimen  of  the  painter  Sodoma  on  the  wall  of  the  choir. 
This  latter,  a  small  Sacrifice  of  Isaac,  is  one  of  the  best  examples 
of  its  exquisite  author,  and  perhaps,  as  chance  has  it,  the  most 
perfect  opposition  that  could  be  found  in  the  way  of  the  range  of 
taste  to  the  effect  of  the  great  mosaic.  There  are  many  painters 
more  powerful  than  Sodoma  —  painters  who,  like  the  author  of 
the  mosaic,  attempted  and  compassed  grandeur ;  but  none  has  a 
more  persuasive  grace,  none  more  than  he  was  to  sift  and  chasten 
a  conception  till  it  should  affect  one  with  the  sweetness  of  a  per 
fectly  distilled  perfume. 

Of  the  patient  successive  efforts  of  painting  to  arrive  at  the 
supreme  refinement  of  such  a  work  as  the  Sodoma  the  Campo 
Santo  hard  by  offers  a  most  interesting  memorial.  It  presents 
a  long,  blank  marble  wall  to  the  relative  profaneness  of  the  Cathe 
dral  close,  but  within  it  is  a  perfect  treasure-house  of  art.  This 
quadrangular  defence  surrounds  an  open  court  where  weeds  and 
wild  roses  are  tangled  together  and  a  sunny  stillness  seems  to 

[436  ] 


TUSCAN   CITIES 

rest  consentingly,  as  if  Nature  had  been  won  to  consciousness  of 
the  precious  relics  committed  to  her.  Something  in  the  quality 
of  the  place  recalls  the  collegiate  cloisters  of  Oxford,  but  it  must 
be  added  that  this  is  the  handsomest  compliment  to  that  seat  of 
learning.  The  open  arches  of  the  quadrangles  of  Magdalen  and 
Christ  Church  are  not  of  mellow  Carrara  marble,  nor  do  they  offer 
to  sight  columns,  slim  and  elegant,  that  seem  to  frame  the  unglazed 
windows  of  a  cathedral.  To  be  buried  in  the  Campo  Santo  of 
Pisa,  I  may  however  further  qualify,  you  need  only  be,  or  to  have 
more  or  less  anciently  been,  illustrious,  and  there  is  a  liberal  al 
lowance  both  as  to  the  character  and  degree  of  your  fame.  The 
most  obtrusive  object  in  one  of  the  long  vistas  is  a  most  compli 
cated  monument  to  Madame  Catalani,  the  singer,  recently  erected 
by  her  possibly  too-appreciative  heirs.  The  wide  pavement  is  a 
mosaic  of  sepulchral  slabs,  and  the  walls,  below  the  base  of  the 
paling  frescoes,  are  incrusted  with  inscriptions  and  encumbered 
with  urns  and  antique  sarcophagi.  The  place  is  at  once  a  cemetery 
and  a  museum,  and  its  especial  charm  is  its  strange  mixture  of  the 
active  and  the  passive,  of  art  and  rest,  of  life  and  death.  Origi 
nally  its  walls  were  one  vast  continuity  of  closely  pressed  frescoes ; 
but  now  the  great  capricious  scars  and  stains  have  come  to  out 
number  the  pictures,  and  the  cemetery  has  grown  to  be  a  burial- 
place  of  pulverised  masterpieces  as  well  as  of  finished  lives.  The 
fragments  of  painting  that  remain  are  fortunately  the  best;  for 
one  is  safe  in  believing  that  a  host  of  undimmed  neighbours  would 
distract  but  little  from  the  two  great  works  of  Orcagna.  Most 
people  know  the  "Triumph  of  Death"  and  the  "Last  Judgment" 

[  437  1 


ITALIAN   HOURS 

from  descriptions  and  engravings;  but  to  measure  the  possible 
good  faith  of  imitative  art  one  must  stand  there  and  see  the  paint 
er's  howling  potentates  dragged  into  hell  in  all  the  vividness  of 
his  bright  hard  colouring ;  see  his  feudal  courtiers,  on  their  pal 
freys,  hold  their  noses  at  what  they  arc  so  fast  coming  to ;  see  his 
great  Christ,  in  judgment,  refuse  forgiveness  with  a  gesture  com 
manding  enough,  really  inhuman  enough,  to  make  virtue  merciless 
for  ever.  The  charge  that  Michael  Angelo  borrowed  his  cursing 
Saviour  from  this  great  figure  of  Orcagna  is  more  valid  than  most 
accusations  of  plagiarism ;  but  of  the  two  figures  one  at  least  could 
be  spared.  For  direct,  triumphant  expressiveness  these  two  superb 
frescoes  have  probably  never  been  surpassed.  The  painter  aims 
at  no  very  delicate  meanings,  but  he  drives  certain  gross  ones 
home  so  effectively  that  for  a  parallel  to  his  process  one  must  look 
to  the  art  of  the  actor,  the  emphasising  "point "-making  mime. 
Some  of  his  female  figures  are  superb  —  they  represent  creatures 
of  a  formidable  temperament. 

There  are  charming  women,  however,  on  the  other  side  of 
the  cloister  —  in  the  beautiful  frescoes  of  Benozzo  Gozzoli.  If 
Orcagna's  work  was  appointed  to  survive  the  ravage  of  time  it 
is  a  happy  chance  that  it  should  be  balanced  by  a  group  of  per 
formances  of  such  a  different  temper.  The  contrast  is  the  more 
striking  that  in  subject  the  inspiration  of  both  painters  is  strictly, 
even  though  superficially,  theological.  But  Benozzo  cares,  in  his 
theology,  for  nothing  but  the  story,  the  scene  and  the  drama  — 
the  chance  to  pile  up  palaces  and  spires  in  his  backgrounds  against 
pale  blue  skies  cross-barred  with  pearly,  fleecy  clouds,  and  to 

[438] 


TUSCAN   CITIES 

scatter  sculptured  arches  and  shady  trellises  over  the  front,  with 
every  incident  of  human  life  going  forward  lightly  and  gracefully 
beneath  them.  Lightness  and  grace  are  the  painter's  great  quali 
ties,  marking  the  hithermost  limit  of  unconscious  elegance,  after 
which  "style"  and  science  and  the  wisdom  of  the  serpent  set  in. 
His  charm  is  natural  fineness;  a  little  more  and  we  should  have 
refinement  —  which  is  a  very  different  thing.  Like  all  les  deli- 
cats  of  this  world,  as  M.  Renan  calls  them,  Benozzo  has  suffered 
greatly.  The  space  on  the  walls  he  originally  covered  with  his 
Old  Testament  stories  is  immense;  but  his  exquisite  handiwork 
has  peeled  off  by  the  acre,  as  one  may  almost  say,  and  the  latter 
compartments  of  the  series  are  swallowed  up  in  huge  white  scars, 
out  of  which  a  helpless  head  or  hand  peeps  forth  like  those  of  crea 
tures  sinking  into  a  quicksand.  As  for  Pisa  at  large,  although  it 
is  not  exactly  what  one  would  call  a  mouldering  city  —  for  it  has 
a  certain  well-aired  cleanness  and  brightness,  even  in  its  supreme 
tranquillity  —  it  affects  the  imagination  very  much  in  the  same 
way  as  the  Campo  Santo.  And,  in  truth,  a  city  so  ancient  and 
deeply  historic  as  Pisa  is  at  every  step  but  the  burial-ground  of 
a  larger  life  than  its  present  one.  The  wide  empty  streets,  the 
goodly  Tuscan  palaces  —  which  look  as  if  about  all  of  them  there 
were  a  genteel  private  understanding,  independent  of  placards, 
that  they  are  to  be  let  extremely  cheap  —  the  delicious  relaxing 
air,  the  full-flowing  yellow  river,  the  lounging  Pisani,  smelling, 
metaphorically,  their  poppy-flowers,  seemed  to  me  all  so  many 
admonitions  to  resignation  and  oblivion.  And  this  is  what  I  mean 
by  saying  that  the  charm  of  Pisa  (apart  from  its  cluster  of  monu- 

[439] 


ITALIAN   HOURS 

ments)  is  a  charm  of  a  high  order.  The  architecture  has  but  a 
modest  dignity;  the  lions  are  few;  there  are  no  fixed  points  for 
stopping  and  gaping.  And  yet  the  impression  is  profound;  the 
charm  is  a  moral  charm.  If  I  were  ever  to  be  incurably  disap 
pointed  in  life,  if  I  had  lost  my  health,  my  money,  or  my  friends, 
if  I  were  resigned  forevermore  to  pitching  my  expectations  in 
a  minor  key,  I  should  go  and  invoke  the  Pisan  peace.  Its  quie 
tude  would  seem  something  more  than  a  stillness  —  a  hush.  Pisa 
may  be  a  dull  place  to  live  in,  but  it's  an  ideal  place  to  wait  for 
death. 

Nothing  could  be  more  charming  than  the  country  between 
Pisa  and  Lucca  —  unless  possibly  the  country  between  Lucca  and 
Pistoia.  If  Pisa  is  dead  Tuscany,  Lucca  is  Tuscany  still  living 
and  enjoying,  desiring  and  intending.  The  town  is  a  charming 
mixture  of  antique  "character"  and  modern  inconsequence;  and 
not  only  the  town,  but  the  country  —  the  blooming  romantic 
country  which  you  admire  from  the  famous  promenade  on  the 
city-wall.  The  wall  is  of  superbly  solid  and  intensely  "toned" 
brickwork  and  of  extraordinary  breadth,  and  its  summit,  planted 
with  goodly  trees  and  swelling  here  and  there  into  bastions  and 
outworks  and  little  open  gardens,  surrounds  the  city  with  a 
circular  lounging-place  of  a  splendid  dignity.  This  well-kept, 
shady,  ivy-grown  rampart  reminded  me  of  certain  mossy  cor 
ners  of  England ;  but  it  looks  away  to  a  prospect  of  more  than 
English  loveliness  —  a  broad  green  plain  where  the  summer 
yields  a  double  crop  of  grain,  and  a  circle  of  bright  blue  moun 
tains  speckled  with  high-hung  convents  and  profiled  castles  and 

[  44°  1 


TUSCAN  CITIES 

nestling  villas,  and  traversed  by  valleys  of  a  deeper  and  duskier 
blue.  In  one  of  the  deepest  and  shadiest  of  these  recesses  one  of 
the  most  "sympathetic"  of  small  watering-places  is  hidden  away 
yet  a  while  longer  from  easy  invasion — the  Baths  to  which  Lucca 
has  lent  its  name.  Lucca  is  pre-eminently  a  city  of  churches; 
ecclesiastical  architecture  being  indeed  the  only  one  of  the  arts 
to  which  it  seems  to  have  given  attention.  There  are  curious  bits 
of  domestic  architecture,  but  no  great  palaces,  and  no  importu 
nate  frequency  of  pictures.  The  Cathedral,  however,  sums  up  the 
merits  of  its  companions  and  is  a  singularly  noble  and  inter 
esting  church.  Its  peculiar  boast  is  a  wonderful  inlaid  front,  on 
which  horses  and  hounds  and  hunted  beasts  are  lavishly  figured 
in  black  marble  over  a  white  ground.  What  I  chiefly  appreciated 
in  the  grey  solemnity  of  the  nave  and  transepts  was  the  superb 
effect  of  certain  second-storey  Gothic  arches  —  those  which  rest 
on  the  pavement  being  Lombard.  These  arches  are  delicate  and 
slender,  like  those  of  the  cloister  at  Pisa,  and  they  play  their  part 
in  the  dusky  upper  air  with  real  sublimity. 

At  Pistoia  there  is  of  course  a  Cathedral,  and  there  is  nothing 
unexpected  in  its  being,  externally  at  least,  highly  impressive ;  in 
its  having  a  grand  campanile  at  its  door,  a  gaudy  baptistery,  in 
alternate  layers  of  black  and  white  marble,  across  the  way,  and 
a  stately  civic  palace  on  either  side.  But  even  had  I  the  space 
to  do  otherwise  I  should  prefer  to  speak  less  of  the  particular 
objects  of  interest  in  the  place  than  of  the  pleasure  I  found  it 
to  lounge  away  in  the  empty  streets  the  quiet  hours  of  a  warm 
afternoon.  To  say  where  I  lingered  longest  would  be  to  tell 


ITALIAN   HOURS 

of  a  little  square  before  the  hospital,  out  of  which  you  look  up 
at  the  beautiful  frieze  in  coloured  earthernware  by  the  brothers 
Delia  Robbia,  which  runs  across  the  front  of  the  building.  It 
represents  the  seven  orthodox  offices  of  charity  and,  with  its 
brilliant  blues  and  yellows  and  its  tender  expressiveness,  bright 
ens  up  amazingly,  to  the  sense  and  soul,  this  little  grey  corner  of 
the  mediaeval  city.  Pistoia  is  still  mediaeval.  How  grass-grown  it 
seemed,  how  drowsy,  how  full  of  idle  vistas  and  melancholy  nooks ! 
If  nothing  was  supremely  wonderful,  everything  was  delicious. 

1874. 


THK     HOSPITAL,     1'ISTOIA. 


OTHER  TUSCAN  CITIES 


OTHER  TUSCAN  CITIES 


HAD  scanted  charming  Pisa  even  as  I 
had  scanted  great  Siena  in  my  original 
small  report  of  it,  my  scarce  more  than 
stammering  notes  of  years  before ;  but 
even  if  there  had  been  meagreness  of 
mere  gaping  vision  —  which  there  in  fact 
had  n't  been  —  as  well  as  insufficiency 
of  public  tribute,  the  indignity  would  soon 
have  ceased  to  weigh  on  my  conscience.  For  to  this  affection  I 
was  to  return  again  still  oftener  than  to  the  strong  call  of  Siena ; 
my  eventual  frequentations  of  Pisa,  all  merely  impressionistic  and 
amateurish  as  they  might  be  —  and  I  pretended,  up  and  down 
the  length  of  the  land,  to  none  other  —  leave  me  at  the  hither 
end  of  time  with  little  more  than  a  confused  consciousness  of  ex 
quisite  quality  on  the  part  of  the  small  sweet  scrap  of  a  place  of 
ancient  glory ;  a  consciousness  so  pleadingly  content  to  be  general 
and  vague  that  I  shrink  from  pulling  it  to  pieces.  The  Republic 
of  Pisa  fought  with  the  Republic  of  Florence,  through  the  ages, 
so  ferociously  and  all  but  invincibly  that  what  is  so  pale  and 
languid  in  her  to-day  may  .well  be  the  aspect  of  any  civil  or,  still 

[  445  1 


ITALIAN  HOURS 

more,  military  creature  bled  and  bled  and  bled  at  the  "critical" 
time  of  its  life.  She  has  verily  a  just  languor  and  is  touchingly 
anaemic;  the  past  history,  or  at  any  rate  the  present  perfect  ac- 
ceptedness,  of  which  condition  hangs  about  her  with  the  last  grace 
of  weakness,  making  her  state  in  this  particular  the  very  secret 
of  her  irresistible  appeal.  I  was  to  find  the  appeal,  again  and 
again,  one  of  the  sweetest,  tenderest,  even  if  not  one  of  the  fullest 
and  richest  impressions  possible ;  and  if  I  went  back  whenever 
I  could  it  was  very  much  as  one  does  n't  indecently  neglect  a  gen 
tle  invalid  friend.  The  couch  of  the  invalid  friend,  beautifully, 
appealingly  resigned,  has  been  wheeled,  say,  for  the  case,  into 
the  warm  still  garden,  and  your  visit  but  consists  of  your  sitting 
beside  it  with  kind,  discreet,  testifying  silences.  Such  is  the  fig 
urative  form  under  which  the  once  rugged  enemy  of  Florence, 
stretched  at  her  length  by  the  rarely  troubled  Arno,  to-day  pre 
sents  herself;  and  I  find  my  analogy  complete  even  to  my  sense 
of  the  mere  mild  seance,  the  inevitably  tacit  communion  or  rather 
blank  interchange,  between  motionless  cripple  and  hardly  more 
incurable  admirer. 

The  terms  of  my  enjoyment  of  Pisa  scarce  departed  from  that 
ideal  —  slow  contemplative  perambulations,  rather  late  in  the 
day  and  after  work  done  mostly  in  the  particular  decent  inn- 
room  that  was  repeatedly  my  portion;  where  the  sunny  flicker 
of  the  river  played  up  from  below  to  the  very  ceiling,  which,  by 
the  same  sign,  anciently  and  curiously  raftered  and  hanging  over 
my  table  at  a  great  height,  had  been  colour-pencilled  into  orna 
ment  as  fine  (for  all  practical  purposes)  as  the  page  of  a  missal. 

[446] 


OTHER  TUSCAN  CITIES 

I  add  to  this,  for  remembrance,  an  inveteracy  of  evening  idle 
ness  and  of  reiterated  ices  in  front  of  one  of  the  quiet  cafes  — 
quiet  as  everything  at  Pisa  is  quiet,  or  will  certainly  but  in  these 
latest  days  have  ceased  to  be;  one  in  especial  so  beautifully,  so 
mysteriously  void  of  bustle  that  almost  always  the  neighbouring 
presence  and  admirable  chatter  of  some  group  of  the  local  Uni 
versity  students  would  fall  upon  my  ear,  by  the  half-hour  at  a 
time,  not  less  as  a  privilege,  frankly,  than  as  a  clear-cut  image 
of  the  young  Italian  mind  and  life,  by  which  I  lost  nothing.  I 
use  such  terms  as  "admirable"  and  "privilege,"  in  this  last  most 
casual  of  connections  —  which  was  moreover  no  connection  at 
all  but  what  my  attention  made  it  —  simply  as  an  acknowledg 
ment  of  the  interest  that  might  play  there  through  some  inevit 
able  thoughts.  These  were,  for  that  matter,  intensely  in  keeping 
with  the  ancient  scene  and  air :  they  dealt  with  the  exquisite  dif 
ference  between  that  tone  and  type  of  ingenuous  adolescence  — 
in  the  mere  relation  of  charmed  audition  —  and  other  forms  of 
juvenility  of  whose  mental  and  material  accent  one  had  elsewhere 
met  the  assault.  Civilised,  charmingly  civilised,  were  my  loqua 
cious  neighbours  —  as  how  had  n't  they  to  be,  one  asked  one's 
self,  through  the  use  of  a  medium  of  speech  that  is  in  itself  a 
sovereign  saturation  ?  There  was  the  beautiful  congruity  of  the 
happily-caught  impression ;  the  fact  of  my  young  men's  general 
Tuscanism  of  tongue,  which  related  them  so  on  the  spot  to  the 
whole  historic  consensus  of  things.  It  was  n't  dialect  —  as  it  of 
course  easily  might  have  been  elsewhere,  at  Milan,  at  Turin,  at 
Bologna,  at  Naples ;  it  was  the  clear  Italian  in  which  all  the  rest 

[  447  1 


ITALIAN  HOURS 

of  the  surrounding  story  was  told,  all  the  rest  of  the  result  of  time 
recorded;  and  it  made  them  delightful,  prattling,  unconscious 
men  of  the  particular  little  constituted  and  bequeathed  world 
which  everything  else  that  was  charged  with  old  meanings  and 
old  beauty  referred  to  —  all  the  more  that  their  talk  was  never 
by  any  chance  of  romping  games  or  deeds  of  violence,  but  kept 
flowering,  charmingly  and  incredibly,  into  eager  ideas  and  literary 
opinions  and  philosophic  discussions  and,  upon  my  honour,  vital 
questions. 

They  have  taken  me  too  far,  for  so  light  a  reminiscence ;  but 
I  claim  for  the  loose  web  of  my  impressions  at  no  point  a  heavier 
texture.  Which  comes  back  to  what  I  was  a  moment  ago  say 
ing —  that  just  in  proportion  as  you  "  feel"  the  morbid  charm  of 
Pisa  you  press  on  it  gently,  and  this  somehow  even  under  stress 
of  whatever  respectful  attention.  I  found  this  last  impulse,  at  all 
events,  so  far  as  I  was  concerned,  quite  contentedly  spend  itself 
in  a  renewed  sense  of  the  simple  large  pacified  felicity  of  such  an 
afternoon  aspect  as  that  of  the  Lung'  Arno,  taken  up  or  down 
its  course;  whether  to  within  sight  of  small  Santa  Maria  della 
Spina,  the  tiny,  the  delicate,  the  exquisite  Gothic  chapel  perched 
where  the  quay  drops  straight,  or,  in  the  other  direction,  toward 
the  melting  perspective  of  the  narrow  local  pleasure-ground,  the 
rather  thin  and  careless  bosky  grace  of  which  recedes,  beside  the 
stream  whose  very  turbidity  pleases,  to  a  middle  distance  of  hot 
and  tangled  and  exuberant  rural  industry  and  a  proper  blue 
horizon  of  Carrara  mountains.  The  Pisan  Lung'  Arno  is  shorter 
and  less  featured  and  framed  than  the  Florentine,  but  it  has  the 

[448  ] 


OTHER  TUSCAN  CITIES 

fine  accent  of  a  marked  curve  and  is  quite  as  bravely  Tuscan ; 
witness  the  type  of  river-fronting  palace  which,  in  half-a-dozen 
massive  specimens,  the  last  word  of  the  anciently  "handsome," 
are  of  the  essence  of  the  physiognomy  of  the  place.  In  the  glow 
of  which  retrospective  admission  I  ask  myself  how  I  came,  under 
my  first  flush,  reflected  in  other  pages,  to  fail  of  justice  to  so 
much  proud  domestic  architecture  —  in  the  very  teeth  moreover 
of  the  fact  that  I  was  for  ever  paying  my  compliments,  in  a 
wistful,  wondering  way,  to  the  fine  Palazzo  Lanfranchi,  occu 
pied  in  1822  by  the  migratory  Byron,  and  whither  Leigh  Hunt,  as 
commemorated  in  the  latter's  Autobiography,  came  out  to  join 
him  in  an  odd  journalistic  scheme. 

Of  course,  however,  I  need  scarcely  add,  the  centre  of  my 
daily  revolution  —  quite  thereby  on  the  circumference  —  was 
the  great  Company  of  Four  in  their  sequestered  corner ;  objects 
of  regularly  recurrent  pious  pilgrimage,  if  for  no  other  purpose 
than  to  see  whether  each  would  each  time  again  so  inimitably 
carry  itself  as  one  of  a  group  of  wonderfully-worked  old  ivories. 
Their  charm  of  relation  to  each  other  and  to  everything  else  that 
concerns  them,  that  of  the  quartette  of  monuments,  is  more 
or  less  inexpressible  all  round ;  but  not  the  least  of  it,  ever,  is  in 
their  beautiful  secret  for  taking  at  different  hours  and  seasons, 
in  different  states  of  the  light,  the  sky,  the  wind,  the  weather 
—  in  different  states,  even,  it  used  verily  to  seem  to  me,  of 
an  admirer's  imagination  or  temper  or  nerves  —  different  com- 
plexional  appearances,  different  shades  and  pallors,  different 
glows  and  chills.  I  have  seen  them  look  almost  viciously  black, 

[449 1 


ITALIAN   HOURS 

and  I  have  seen  them  as  clear  and  fair  as  pale  gold.  And  these 
things,  for  the  most  part,  off  on  the  large  grassy  carpet  spread 
for  them,  and  with  the  elbow  of  the  old  city-wall,  not  elsewhere 
erect,  respectfully  but  protectingly  crooked  about,  to  the  tune 
of  a  usual  unanimity  save  perhaps  in  the  case  of  the  Leaning 
Tower  —  so  abnormal  a  member  of  any  respectable  family  this 
structure  at  best  that  I  always  somehow  fancied  its  three  com 
panions,  the  Cathedral,  the  Baptistery  and  the  Campo  Santo, 
capable  of  quiet  common  understandings,  for  the  major  or  the 
minor  effect,  into  which  their  odd  fellow,  no  hint  thrown  out 
to  him,  was  left  to  enter  as  he  might.  If  one  haunted  the  place, 
one  ended  by  yielding  to  the  conceit  that,  beautifully  though 
the  others  of  the  group  may  be  said  to  behave  about  him,  one 
sometimes  caught  them  in  the  act  of  tacitly  combining  to  ignore 
him  —  as  if  he  had,  after  so  long,  begun  to  give  on  their  nerves. 
Or  is  that  absurdity  but  my  shamefaced  form  of  admission  that, 
for  all  the  wonder  of  him,  he  finally  gave  on  mine  ?  Frankly  — 
I  would  put  it  at  such  moments  —  he  becomes  at  last  an  optical 
bore  or  betise. 


II 


To  Lucca  I  was  not  to  return  often  —  I  was  to  return  only  once ; 
when  that  compact  and  admirable  little  city,  the  very  model  of 
a  small  pays  de  Cocagne,  overflowing  with  everything  that  makes 
for  ease,  for  plenty,  for  beauty,  for  interest  and  good  example, 

[450] 


;<;i.\,    i. (.'CCA. 


OTHER  TUSCAN   CITIES 

renewed  for  me,  in  the  highest  degree,  its  genial  and  robust  ap 
pearance.  The  perfection  of  this  renewal  must  indeed  have  been, 
at  bottom,  the  ground  of  my  rather  hanging  back  from  possible 
excess  of  acquaintance  —  with  the  instinct  that  so  right  and  rich 
and  rounded  a  little  impression  had  better  be  left  than  endan 
gered.  I  remember  positively  saying  to  myself  the  second  time 
that  no  brown-and-gold  Tuscan  city,  even,  could  be  as  happy 
as  Lucca  looked  —  save  always,  exactly,  Lucca ;  so  that,  on  the 
chance  of  any  shade  of  human  illusion  in  the  case,  I  would  n't, 
as  a  brooding  analyst,  go  within  fifty  miles  of  it  again.  Just  so, 
I  fear  I  must  confess,  it  was  this  mere  face-value  of  the  place  that, 
when  I  went  back,  formed  my  sufficiency;  I  spent  all  my  scant 
time  —  or  the  greater  part,  for  I  took  a  day  to  drive  over  to  the 
Bagni  —  just  gaping  at  its  visible  attitude.  This  may  be  described 
as  that  of  simply  sitting  there,  through  the  centuries,  at  the  receipt 
of  perfect  felicity;  on  its  splendid  solid  seat  of  russet  masonry, 
that  is  —  for  its  great  republican  ramparts  of  long  ago  still  lock 
it  tight  —  with  its  wide  garden-land,  its  ancient  appanage  or 
hereditary  domain,  teeming  and  blooming  with  everything  that 
is  good  and  pleasant  for  man,  all  about,  and  with  a  ring  of  grace 
ful  and  noble,  yet  comparatively  unbeneficed  uplands  and  moun 
tains  watching  it,  for  very  envy,  across  the  plain,  as  a  circle  of 
bigger  boys,  in  the  playground,  may  watch  a  privileged  or  pam 
pered  smaller  one  munch  a  particularly  fine  apple.  Half  smothered 
thus  in  oil  and  wine  and  corn  and  all  the  fruits  of  the  earth, 
Lucca  seems  fairly  to  laugh  for  good-humour,  and  it's  as  if  one 
can't  say  more  for  her  than  that,  thanks  to  her  putting  forward 

[451 1 


ITALIAN  HOURS 

for  you  a  temperament  somehow  still  richer  than  her  heritage, 
you  forgive  her  at  every  turn  her  fortune.  She  smiles  up  at  you 
her  greeting  as  you  dip  into  her  wide  lap,  out  of  which  you  may 
select  almost  any  rare  morsel  whatever.  Looking  back  at  my 
own  choice  indeed  I  see  it  must  have  suffered  a  certain  embar 
rassment  —  that  of  the  sense  of  too  many  things ;  for  I  scarce 
remember  choosing  at  all,  any  more  than  I  recall  having  had  to  go 
hungry.  I  turned  into  all  the  churches  —  taking  care,  however, 
to  pause  before  one  of  them,  though  before  which  I  now  irre 
coverably  forget,  for  verification  of  Ruskin's  so  characteristically 
magnified  rapture  over  the  high  and  rather  narrow  and  obscure 
hunting-frieze  on  its  front  —  and  in  the  Cathedral  paid  my  re 
spects  at  every  turn  to  the  greatest  of  Lucchesi,  Matteo  Civitale, 
wisest,  sanest,  homeliest,  kindest  of  quattro-cento  sculptors,  to 
whose  works  the  Duomo  serves  almost  as  a  museum.  But  my 
nearest  approach  to  anything  so  invidious  as  a  discrimination  or 
a  preference,  under  the  spell  of  so  felt  an  equilibrium,  must  have 
been  the  act  of  engaging  a  carriage  for  the  Baths. 

That  inconsequence  once  perpetrated,  let  me  add,  the  im 
pression  was  as  right  as  any  other  —  the  impression  of  the  drive 
through  the  huge  general  tangled  and  fruited  podere  of  the  coun 
tryside  ;  that  of  the  pair  of  jogging  hours  that  bring  the  visitor 
to  where  the  wideish  gate  of  the  valley  of  the  Serchio  opens.  The 
question  after  this  became  quite  other;  the  narrowing,  though 
always  more  or  less  smiling  gorge  that  draws  you  on  and  on  is 
a  different,  a  distinct  proposition  altogether,  with  its  own  indi 
vidual  grace  of  appeal  and  association.  It  is  the  association, 

[452] 


OTHER   TUSCAN   CITIES 

exactly,  that  would  even  now,  on  this  page,  beckon  me  forward, 
or  perhaps  I  should  rather  say  backward  —  were  n't  more  than  a 
glance  at  it  out  of  the  question  —  to  a  view  of  that  easier  and  not 
so  inordinately  remote  past  when  " people  spent  the  summer" 
in  these  perhaps  slightly  stuffy  shades.  I  speak  of  that  age,  I 
think  of  it  at  least,  as  easier  than  ours,  in  spite  of  the  fact  that 
even  as  I  made  my  pilgrimage  the  mark  of  modern  change,  the 
railway  in  construction,  had  begun  to  be  distinct,  though  the 
automobile  was  still  pretty  far  in  the  future.  The  relations  and 
proportions  of  everything  are  of  course  now  altered  —  I  indeed, 
I  confess,  wince  at  the  vision  of  the  cloud  of  motor-dust  that 
must  in  the  fine  season  hang  over  the  whole  connection.  That 
represents  greater  promptness  of  approach  to  the  bosky  depths 
of  Ponte-a-Serraglio  and  the  Bagni  Caldi,  but  it  throws  back  the 
other  time,  that  of  the  old  jogging  relation,  of  the  Tuscan  grand- 
ducal  "season"  and  the  small  cosmopolite  sociability,  into  quite 
Arcadian  air  and  the  comparatively  primitive  scale.  The  "easier" 
Italy  of  our  infatuated  precursors  there  wears  its  glamour  of 
facility  not  through  any  question  of  "the  development  of  com 
munications,"  but  through  the  very  absence  of  the  dream  of  that 
boon,  thanks  to  which  every  one  (among  the  infatuated)  lived 
on  terms  of  so  much  closer  intercourse  with  the  general  object 
of  their  passion.  After  we  had  crossed  the  Serchio  that  beau 
tiful  day  we  passed  into  the  charming,  the  amiably  tortuous, 
the  thickly  umbrageous,  valley  of  the  Lima,  and  then  it  was 
that  I  seemed  fairly  to  remount  the  stream  of  time ;  figuring  to 
myself  wistfully,  at  the  small  scattered  centres  of  entertainment 

[453] 


ITALIAN  HOURS 

—  modest  inns,  pensions  and  other  places  of  convenience  clus 
tered  where  the  friendly  torrent  is  bridged  or  the  forested  slopes 
adjust  themselves — what  the  summer  days  and  the  summer  ram 
bles  and  the  summer  dreams  must  have  been,  in  the  blest  place, 
when  "people"  (by  which  I  mean  the  contingent  of  beguiled 
barbarians)  did  n't  know  better,  as  we  say,  than  to  content 
themselves  with  such  a  mild  substitute,  such  a  soft,  sweet  and 
essentially  elegant  apology,  for  adventure.  One  wanted  not  sim 
ply  to  hang  about  a  little,  but  really  to  live  back,  as  surely  one 
might  have  done  by  staying  on,  into  the  so  romantically  strong, 
if  mechanically  weak,  Italy  of  the  associations  of  one's  youth. 
It  was  a  pang  to  have  to  revert  to  the  present  even  in  the  form 
of  Lucca  —  which  says  everything. 


Ill 


IF  undeveloped  communications  were  to  become  enough  for  me 
at  those  retrospective  moments,  I  might  have  felt  myself  supplied 
to  my  taste,  let  me  go  on  to  say,  at  the  hour  of  my  making,  with 
great  resolution,  an  attempt  on  high-seated  and  quite  grandly 
out-of-the-way  Volterra:  a  reminiscence  associated  with  quite 
a  different  year  and,  I  should  perhaps  sooner  have  bethought 
myself,  with  my  fond  experience  of  Pisa  —  inasmuch  as  it  was 
during  a  pause  under  that  bland  and  motionless  wing  that  I  seem 
to  have  had  to  organise  in  the  darkness  of  a  summer  dawn  my 
approach  to  the  old  Etruscan  stronghold.  The  railway  then  ex- 

[454] 


OTHER  TUSCAN  CITIES 

isted,  but  I  rose  in  the  dim  small  hours  to  take  my  train ;  moreover, 
so  far  as  that  might  too  much  savour  of  an  incongruous  facility, 
the  fault  was  in  due  course  quite  adequately  repaired  by  an  appar 
ent  repudiation  of  any  awareness  of  such  false  notes  on  the  part 
of  the  town.  I  may  not  invite  the  reader  to  penetrate  with  me  by 
so  much  as  a  step  the  boundless  backward  reach  of  history  to  which 
the  more  massive  of  the  Etruscan  gates  of  Volterra,  the  Porta 
all'  Arco,  forms  the  solidest  of  thresholds ;  since  I  perforce  take  no 
step  myself,  and  am  even  exceptionally  condemned  here  to  im 
pressionism  unashamed.  My  errand  was  to  spend  a  Sunday  with 
an  Italian  friend,  a  native  in  fact  of  the  place,  master  of  a  house 
there  in  which  he  offered  me  hospitality ;  who,  also  arriving  from 
Florence  the  night  before,  had  obligingly  come  on  with  me  from 
Pisa,  and  whose  consciousness  of  a  due  urbanity,  already  rather 
overstrained,  and  still  well  before  noon,  by  the  accumulation  of 
our  matutinal  vicissitudes  and  other  grounds  for  patience,  met  all 
ruefully  at  the  station  the  supreme  shock  of  an  apparently  great 
desolate  world  of  volcanic  hills,  of  blank,  though  "  engineered," 
undulations,  as  the  emergence  of  a  road  testified,  unmitigated 
by  the  smallest  sign  of  a  wheeled  vehicle.  The  station,  in  other 
words,  looked  out  at  that  time  (and  I  daresay  the  case  has  n't 
strikingly  altered)  on  a  mere  bare  huge  hill-country,  by  some  re 
mote  mighty  shoulder  of  which  the  goal  of  our  pilgrimage,  so 
questionably  "  served"  by  the  railway,  was  hidden  from  view. 
Served  as  well  by  a  belated  omnibus,  a  four-in-hand  of  lame  and 
lamentable  quality,  the  place,  I  hasten  to  add,  eventually  put 
forth  some  show  of  being ;  after  a  complete  practical  recognition 

[455] 


ITALIAN  HOURS 

of  which,  let  me  at  once  further  mention,  all  the  other,  the  posi 
tive  and  sublime,  connections  of  Volterra  established  themselves 
for  me  without  my  lifting  a  finger. 

The  small  shrunken,  but  still  lordly  prehistoric  city  is  perched, 
when  once  you  have  rather  painfully  zigzagged  to  within  sight 
of  it,  very  much  as  an  eagle's  eyrie,  oversweeping  the  land  and 
the  sea ;  and  to  that  type  of  position,  the  ideal  of  the  airy  peak 
of  vantage,  with  all  accessories  and  minor  features  a  drop,  a  slide 
and  a  giddiness,  its  individual  items  and  elements  strike  you 
at  first  as  instinctively  conforming.  This  impression  was  doubt 
less  after  a  little  modified  for  me;  there  were  levels,  there  were 
small  stony  practicable  streets,  there  were  walks  and  strolls, 
outside  the  gates  and  roundabout  the  cyclopean  wall,  to  the  far 
end  of  downward-tending  protrusions  and  promontories,  natural 
buttresses  and  pleasant  terrene  headlands,  friendly  suburban 
spots  (one  would  call  them  if  the  word  had  less  detestable 
references)  where  games  of  bowls  and  overtrellised  wine-tables 
could  put  in  their  note;  in  spite  of  which  however  my  friend's 
little  house  of  hospitality,  clean  and  charming  and  oh,  so  im- 
memorially  Tuscan,  was  as  perpendicular  and  ladder-like  as  so 
compact  a  residence  could  be;  it  kept  up  for  me  beautifully 
—  as  regards  posture  and  air,  though  humanly  and  socially  it 
rather  cooed  like  a  dovecote  —  the  illusion  of  the  vertiginously 
"  balanced"  eagle's  nest.  The  air,  in  truth,  all  the  rest  of  that 
splendid  day,  must  have  been  the  key  to  the  promptly-produced 
intensity  of  one's  relation  to  every  aspect  of  the  charming  epi 
sode  ;  the  light,  cool,  keen  air  of  those  delightful  high  places,  in 

[456  ] 


OTHER   TUSCAN   CITIES 

Italy,  that  tonically  correct  the  ardours  of  July,  and  which  at 
our  actual  altitude  could  but  affect  me  as  the  very  breath  of 
the  grand  local  legend.  I  might  have  "had"  the  little  house, our 
particular  eagle's  nest,  for  the  summer,  and  even  on  such  touch 
ing  terms ;  and  I  well  remember  the  force  of  the  temptation  to 
take  it,  if  only  other  complications  had  permitted ;  to  spend  the 
series  of  weeks  with  that  admirable  interesting  freshness  in  my 
lungs:  interesting,  I  especially  note,  as  the  strong  appropriate 
medium  in  which  a  continuity  with  the  irrecoverable  but  still 
effective  past  had  been  so  robustly  preserved.  I  could  n't  yield, 
alas,  to  the  conceived  felicity,  which  had  half-a-dozen  appealing 
aspects;  I  could  only,  while  thus  feeling  how  the  atmospheric 
medium  itself  made  for  a  positively  initiative  exhilaration,  enjoy 
my  illusion  till  the  morrow.  The  exhilaration  therefore  supplies 
to  memory  the  whole  light  in  which,  for  the  too  brief  time,  I  went 
about  "seeing"  Volterra;  so  that  my  glance  at  the  seated  splen 
dour  reduces  itself,  as  I  have  said,  to  the  merest  impressionism; 
nothing  more  was  to  be  looked  for,  on  the  stretched  surface  of 
consciousness,  from  one  breezy  wash  of  the  brush.  I  find  there 
the  clean  strong  image  simplified  to  the  three  or  four  unforgetta 
ble  particulars  of  the  vast  rake  of  the  view ;  with  the  Maremma, 
of  evil  fame,  more  or  less  immediately  below,  but  with  those 
islands  of  the  sea,  Corsica  and  Elba,  the  names  of  which  are 
sharply  associational  beyond  any  others,  dressing  the  far  hori 
zon  in  the  grand  manner,  and  the  Ligurian  coast-line  melting 
northward  into  beauty  and  history  galore;  with  colossal  unce- 
mented  blocks  of  Etruscan  gates  and  walls  plunging  you  — 

[  457  ] 


ITALIAN   HOURS 

and  by  their  very  interest  —  into  a  sweet  surrender  of  any  privi 
lege  of  appreciation  more  crushing  than  your  general  synthetic 
stare;  and  with  the  rich  and  perfectly  arranged  museum,  an 
unsurpassed  exhibition  of  monumental  treasure  from  Etruscan 
tombs,  funereal  urns  mainly,  reliquaries  of  an  infinite  power  to 
move  and  charm  us  still,  contributing  to  this  same  so  resigned, 
but  somehow  at  the  same  time  so  inspired,  collapse  of  the  his 
toric  imagination  under  too  heavy  a  pressure,  or  abeyance  of 
"private  judgment"  in  too  unequal  a  relation. 


IV 


I  REMEMBER  recovering  private  judgment  indeed  in  the  course 
of  two  or  three  days  following  the  excursion  I  have  just  noted ; 
which  must  have  shaped  themselves  in  some  sort  of  consonance 
with  the  idea  that  as  we  were  hereabouts  in  the  very  middle 
of  dim  Etruria  a  common  self-respect  prescribed  our  somehow 
profiting  by  the  fact.  This  kindled  in  us  the  spirit  of  explora 
tion,  but  with  results  of  which  I  here  attempt  no  record,  so  utterly 
does  the  whole  impression  swoon  away,  for  present  memory, 
into  vagueness,  confusion  and  intolerable  heat.  Our  self-respect 
was  of  the  common  order,  but  the  blaze  of  the  July  sun  was, 
even  for  Tuscany,  of  the  uncommon;  so  that  the  project  of  a 
trudging  quest  for  Etruscan  tombs  in  shadeless  wastes  yielded 
to  its  own  temerity.  There  comes  back  to  me  nevertheless  at 
the  same  time,  from  the  mild  misadventure,  and  quite  as  through 

[458] 


OTHER  TUSCAN   CITIES 

this  positive  humility  of  failure,  the  sense  of  a  supremely  intimate 
revelation  of  Italy  in  undress,  so  to  speak  (the  state,  it  seemed, 
in  which  one  would  most  fondly,  most  ideally,  enjoy  her) ;  Italy 
no  longer  in  winter  starch  and  sobriety,  with  winter  manners 
and  winter  prices  and  winter  excuses,  all  addressed  to  the  fores- 
fieri  and  the  philistines ;  but  lolling  at  her  length,  with  her  graces 
all  relaxed,  and  thereby  only  the  more  natural ;  the  brilliant  per 
former,  in  short,  en  famille,  the  curtain  down  and  her  salary 
stopped  for  the  season  —  thanks  to  which  she  is  by  so  much  more 
the  easy  genius  and  the  good  creature  as  she  is  by  so  much  less 
the  advertised  prima  donna.  She  received  us  nowhere  more  sym 
pathetically,  that  is  with  less  ceremony  or  self-consciousness,  I 
seem  to  recall,  than  at  Montepulciano,  for  instance  —  where  it 
was  indeed  that  the  recovery  of  private  judgment  I  just  referred 
to  could  n't  help  taking  place.  What  we  were  doing,  or  what 
we  expected  to  do,  at  Montepulciano  I  keep  no  other  trace  of 
than  is  bound  up  in  a  present  quite  tender  consciousness  that  I 
would  n't  for  the  world  not  have  been  there.  I  think  my  reason 
must  have  been  largely  just  in  the  beauty  of  the  name  (for  could 
any  beauty  be  greater  ?),  reinforced  no  doubt  by  the  fame  of  the 
local  vintage  and  the  sense  of  how  we  should  quaff  it  on  the  spot. 
Perhaps  we  quaffed  it  too  constantly;  since  the  romantic  picture 
reduces  itself  for  me  but  to  two  definite  appearances ;  that  of  the 
more  priggish  discrimination  so  far  reasserting  itself  as  to  advise 
me  that  Montepulciano  was  dirty,  even  remarkably  dirty;  and 
that  of  her  being  not  much  else  besides  but  perched  and  brown 
and  queer  and  crooked,  and  noble  withal  (which  is  what  almost 

[459] 


ITALIAN   HOURS 

any  Tuscan  city  more  easily  than  not  acquits  herself  of;  all  the 
while  she  may  on  such  occasions  figure,  when  one  looks  off  from 
her  to  the  end  of  dark  street-vistas  or  catches  glimpses  through 
high  arcades,  some  big  battered,  blistered,  overladen,  overmasted 
ship,  swimming  in  a  violet  sea). 

If  I  have  lost  the  sense  of  what  we  were  doing,  that  could 
at  all  suffer  commemoration,  at  Montepulciano,  so  I  sit  helpless 
before  the  memory  of  small  stewing  Torrita,  which  we  must 
somehow  have  expected  to  yield,  under  our  confidence,  a  view  of 
shy  charms,  but  which  did  n't  yield,  to  my  recollection,  even  any 
thing  that  could  fairly  be  called  a  breakfast  or  a  dinner.  There 
may  have  been  in  the  neighbourhood  a  rumour  of  Etruscan 
tombs;  the  neighbourhood,  however,  was  vast,  and  that  possibil 
ity  not  to  be  verified,  in  the  conditions,  save  after  due  refresh 
ment.  Then  it  was,  doubtless,  that  the  question  of  refreshment 
so  beckoned  us,  by  a  direct  appeal,  straight  across  country,  from 
Perugia,  that,  casting  consistency,  if  not  to  the  winds,  since  alas 
there  were  none,  but  to  the  lifeless  air,  we  made  the  sweltering 
best  of  our  way  (and  it  took,  for  the  distance,  a  terrible  time)  to 
the  Grand  Hotel  of  that  city.  This  course  shines  for  me,  in  the 
retrospect,  with  a  light  even  more  shameless  than  that  in  which 
my  rueful  conscience  then  saw  it ;  since  we  thus  exchanged  again, 
at  a  stroke,  the  tousled  bonne  file  of  our  vacational  Tuscany  for 
the  formal  and  figged-out  presence  of  Italy  on  her  good  behav 
iour.  We  had  never  seen  her  conform  more  to  all  the  proprie 
ties,  we  felt,  than  under  this  aspect  of  lavish  hospitality  to  that 
now  apparently  quite  inveterate  swarm  of  pampered  forestieri, 


OTHER  TUSCAN  CITIES 

English  and  Americans  in  especial,  who,  having  had  Roman 
palaces  and  villas  deliciously  to  linger  in,  break  the  northward 
journey,  when  once  they  decide  to  take  it,  in  the  Umbrian  para 
dise.  They  were,  goodness  knows,  within  their  rights,  and  we 
profited,  as  any  one  may  easily  and  cannily  profit  at  that  time,  by 
the  sophistications  paraded  for  them ;  only  I  feel,  as  I  pleasantly 
recover  it  all,  that  though  we  had  arrived  perhaps  at  the  most 
poetical  of  watering-places  we  had  lost  our  finer  clue.  (The  dif 
ference  from  other  days  was  immense,  all  the  span  of  evolution 
from  the  ancient  malodorous  inn  which  somehow  did  n't  matter, 
to  that  new  type  of  polyglot  caravanserai  which  everywhere  in 
sists  on  mattering  —  mattering,  even  in  places  where  other  inter 
ests  abound,  so  much  more  than  anything  else.)  That  clue,  the 
finer  as  I  say,  I  would  fain  at  any  rate  to-day  pick  up  for  its  close 
attachment  to  another  Tuscan  city  or  two  —  for  a  felt  pull  from 
strange  little  San  Gimignano  delle  belle  Torre  in  especial;  by 
which  I  mean  from  the  memory  of  a  summer  Sunday  spent  there 
during  a  stay  at  Siena.  But  I  have  already  superabounded,  for 
mere  love  of  my  general  present  rubric  —  the  real  thickness  of 
experience  having  a  good  deal  evaporated,  so  that  the  Tiny  Town 
of  the  Many  Towers  hangs  before  me,  not  to  say,  rather,  far 
behind  me,  after  the  manner  of  an  object  directly  meeting  the 
wrong  or  diminishing  lens  of  one's  telescope. 

It  did  everything,  on  the  occasion  of  that  pilgrimage,  that  it 
was  expected  to  do,  presenting  itself  more  or  less  in  the  guise 
of  some  rare  silvery  shell,  washed  up  by  the  sea  of  time,  cracked 
and  battered  and  dishonoured,  with  its  mutilated  marks  of  ad- 

[461 1 


ITALIAN  HOURS 

justment  to  the  extinct  type  of  creature  it  once  harboured  figur 
ing  against  the  sky  as  maimed  gesticulating  arms  flourished  in 
protest  against  fate.  If  the  centuries,  however,  had  pretty  well 
cleaned  out,  vulgarly  speaking,  this  amazing  little  fortress-town, 
it  was  n't  that  a  mere  aching  void  was  bequeathed  us,  I  recog 
nise  as  I  consult  a  somewhat  faded  impression ;  the  whole  scene 
and  occasion  come  back  to  me  as  the  exhibition,  on  the  contrary, 
of  a  stage  rather  crowded  and  agitated,  of  no  small  quantity  of 
sound  and  fury,  of  concussions,  discussions,  vociferations,  hurry- 
ings  to  and  fro,  that  could  scarce  have  reached  a  higher  pitch  in 
the  old  days  of  the  siege  and  the  sortie.  San  Gimignano  affected 
me,  to  a  certainty,  as  not  dead,  I  mean,  but  as  inspired  with  that 
strange  and  slightly  sinister  new  life  that  is  now,  in  case  after 
case,  up  and  down  the  peninsula,  and  even  in  presence  of  the 
dryest  and  most  scattered  bones,  producing  the  miracle  of  resur 
rection.  The  effect  is  often  —  and  I  find  it  strikingly  involved  in 
this  particular  reminiscence — that  of  the  buried  hero  himself 
positively  waking  up  to  show  you  his  bones  for  a  fee,  and  almost 
capering  about  in  his  appeal  to  your  attention.  What  has  become 
of  the  soul  of  San  Gimignano  who  shall  say  ?  —  but,  of  a  genial 
modern  Sunday,  it  is  as  if  the  heroic  skeleton,  risen  from  the  dust, 
were  in  high  activity,  officious  for  your  entertainment  and  your 
detention,  clattering  and  changing  plates  at  the  informal  friendly 
inn,  personally  conducting  you  to  a  sight  of  the  admirable  Santa 
Fina  of  Ghirlandaio,  as  I  believe  is  supposed,  in  a  dim  chapel  of 
the  Collegiata  church ;  the  poor  young  saint,  on  her  low  bed,  in 
a  state  of  ecstatic  vision  (the  angelic  apparition  is  given),  accom- 

[462] 


TOWKKS     OF     SAN     GI.MIGNANO. 


OTHER  TUSCAN   CITIES 

panied  by  a  few  figures  and  accessories  of  the  most  beautiful  and 
touching  truth.  This  image  is  what  has  most  vividly  remained 
with  me,  of  the  day  I  thus  so  ineffectually  recover ;  the  precious 
ill-set  gem  or  domestic  treasure  of  Santa  Fina,  and  then  the  won 
derful  drive,  at  eventide,  back  to  Siena :  the  progress  through  the 
darkening  land  that  was  like  a  dense  fragrant  garden,  all  fireflies 
and  warm  emanations  and  dimly-seen  motionless  festoons,  ex 
travagant  vines  and  elegant  branches  intertwisted  for  miles,  with 
couples  and  companies  of  young  countryfolk  almost  as  fondly 
united  and  raising  their  voices  to  the  night  as  if  superfluously  to 
sing  out  at  you  that  they  were  happy,  and  above  all  were  Tuscan. 
On  reflection,  and  to  be  just,  I  connect  the  slightly  incongruous 
loudness  that  hung  about  me  under  the  Beautiful  Towers  with 
the  really  too  coarse  competition  for  my  favour  among  the  young 
vetturini  who  lay  in  wait  for  my  approach,  and  with  an  eye  to 
my  subsequent  departure,  on  my  quitting,  at  some  unremembered 
spot,  the  morning  train  from  Siena,  from  which  point  there  was 
then  still  a  drive.  That  onset  was  of  a  fine  mediaeval  violence, 
but  the  subsiding  echoes  of  it  alone  must  have  afterwards  borne 
me  company ;  mingled,  at  the  worst,  with  certain  reverberations  of 
the  animated  rather  than  concentrated  presence  of  sundry  young 
sketchers  and  copyists  of  my  own  nationality,  which  element  in 
the  picture  conveyed  beyond  anything  else  how  thoroughly  it  was 
all  to  sit  again  henceforth  in  the  eye  of  day.  My  final  vision  per 
haps  was  of  a  sacred  reliquary  not  so  much  rudely  as  familiarly 
and  "humorously"  torn  open.  The  note  had,  with  all  its  refer 
ences,  its  own  interest;  but  I  never  went  again. 


RAVENNA 


RAVENNA 


WRITE  these  lines  on  a  cold  Swiss 
mountain-top,  shut  in  by  an  intense 
white  mist  from  any  glimpse  of  the  under 
world  of  lovely  Italy;  but  as  I  jotted 
down  the  other  day  in  the  ancient  capital 
of  Honorius  and  Theodoric  the  few  notes 
of  which  they  are  composed,  I  let  the 
original  date  stand  for  local  colour's 
sake.  Its  mere  look,  as  I  transcribe  it,  emits  a  grateful  glow  in 
the  midst  of  the  Alpine  rawness,  and  gives  a  depressed  imagina 
tion  something  tangible  to  grasp  while  awaiting  the  return  of  fine 
weather.  For  Ravenna  was  glowing,  less  than  a  week  since,  as  I 
edged  along  the  narrow  strip  of  shadow  binding  one  side  of  the 
empty,  white  streets.  After  a  long,  chill  spring  the  summer  this 
year  descended  upon  Italy  with  a  sudden  jump  and  an  ominous 
hot  breath.  I  stole  away  from  Florence  in  the  night,  and  even  on 
top  of  the  Apennines,  under  the  dull  starlight  and  in  the  rushing 
train,  one  could  but  sit  and  pant  perspiringly. 

At  Bologna  I  found  a  festa,  or  rather  two  festas,  a  civil  and  a 
religious,  going  on  in  mutual  mistrust  and  disparagement.  The 
civil,  that  of  the  Statute,  was  the  one  fully  national  Italian  holi 
day  as  by  law  established  —  the  day  that  signalises  everywhere 

[467  ] 


ITALIAN  HOURS 

over  the  land  at  once  its  achieved  and  hard-won  unification; 
the  religious  was  a  jubilee  of  certain  local  churches.  The  latter 
is  observed  by  the  Bolognese  parishes  in  couples,  and  comes 
round  for  each  couple  but  once  in  ten  years  —  an  arrangement  by 
which  the  faithful  at  large  insure  themselves  a  liberal  recurrence 
of  expensive  processions.  It  was  n't  my  business  to  distinguish 
the  sheep  from  the  goats,  the  pious  from  the  profane,  the  prayers 
from  the  scoffers ;  it  was  enough  that,  melting  together  under  the 
scorching  sun,  they  filled  the  admirably  solid  city  with  a  flood 
of  spectacular  life.  The  combination  at  one  point  was  really  dra 
matic.  While  a  long  procession  of  priests  and  young  virgins  in 
white  veils,  bearing  tapers,  marshalled  itself  in  one  of  the  streets, 
a  review  of  the  King's  troops  went  forward  outside  the  town.  On 
its  return  a  large  detachment  of  cavalry  passed  across  the  space 
where  the  incense  was  burning,  the  pictured  banners  swaying 
and  the  litany  being  droned,  and  checked  the  advance  of  the 
little  ecclesiastical  troop.  The  long  vista  of  the  street,  between 
the  porticoes,  was  festooned  with  garlands  and  scarlet  and  tinsel ; 
the  robes  and  crosses  and  canopies  of  the  priests,  the  clouds  of 
perfumed  smoke  and  the  white  veils  of  the  maidens,  were  resolved 
by  the  hot  bright  air  into  a  gorgeous  medley  of  colour,  across 
which  the  mounted  soldiers  rattled  and  flashed  as  if  it  had  been 
a  conquering  army  trampling  on  an  embassy  of  propitiation.  It 
was,  to  tell  the  truth,  the  first  time  an  Italian  festa  had  really 
exhibited  to  my  eyes  the  genial  glow  and  the  romantic  partic 
ulars  promised  by  song  and  story;  and  I  confess  that  those  eyes 
found  more  pleasure  in  it  than  they  were  to  find  an  hour  later  in 

[468  ] 


RAVENNA 

the  picturesque  on  canvas  as  one  observes  it  in  the  Pinacoteca. 
I  found  myself  scowling  most  unmercifully  at  Guido  and  Domeni- 
chino. 

For  Ravenna,  however,  I  had  nothing  but  smiles  —  grave, 
reflective,  philosophic  smiles,  I  hasten  to  add,  such  as  accord 
with  the  historic  dignity,  not  to  say  the  mortal  sunny  sadness,  of 
the  place.  I  arrived  there  in  the  evening,  before,  even  at  drowsy 
Ravenna,  the  festa  of  the  Statute  had  altogether  put  itself  to  bed. 
I  immediately  strolled  forth  from  the  inn,  and  found  it  sitting  up 
a  while  longer  on  the  piazza,  chiefly  at  the  cafe  door,  listening  to 
the  band  of  the  garrison  by  the  light  of  a  dozen  or  so  of  feeble 
tapers,  fastened  along  the  front  of  the  palace  of  the  Government. 
Before  long,  however,  it  had  dispersed  and  departed,  and  I  was 
left  alone  with  the  grey  illumination  and  with  an  affable  citizen 
whose  testimony  as  to  the  manners  and  customs  of  Ravenna  I 
had  aspired  to  obtain.  I  had,  borrowing  confidence  from  prompt 
observation,  suggested  deferentially  that  it  was  n't  the  liveliest 
place  in  the  world,  and  my  friend  admitted  that  it  was  in  fact 
not  a  seat  of  ardent  life.  But  had  I  seen  the  Corso  ?  Without  see 
ing  the  Corso  one  did  n't  exhaust  the  possibilities.  The  Corso  of 
Ravenna,  of  a  hot  summer  night,  had  an  air  of  surprising  seclu 
sion  and  repose.  Here  and  there  in  an  upper  closed  window  glim 
mered  a  light;  my  companion's  footsteps  and  my  own  were  the 
only  sounds;  not  a  creature  was  within  sight.  The  suffocating 
air  helped  me  to  believe  for  a  moment  that  I  walked  in  the  Italy 
of  Boccaccio,  hand-in-hand  with  the  plague,  through  a  city  which 
had  lost  half  its  population  by  pestilence  and  the  other  half  by 

[469] 


ITALIAN  HOURS 

flight.  I  turned  back  into  my  inn  profoundly  satisfied.  This  at 
last  was  the  old-world  dulness  of  a  prime  distillation ;  this  at  last 
was  antiquity,  history,  repose. 

The  impression  was  largely  confirmed  and  enriched  on  the 
following  day;  but  it  was  obliged  at  an  early  stage  of  my  visit  to 
give  precedence  to  another  —  the  lively  perception,  namely,  of 
the  thinness  of  my  saturation  with  Gibbon  and  the  other  sources 
of  legend.  At  Ravenna  the  waiter  at  the  cafe  and  the  coachman 
who  drives  you  to  the  Pine-Forest  allude  to  Galla  Placidia  and 
Justinian  as  to  any  attractive  topic  of  the  hour;  wherever  you 
turn  you  encounter  some  fond  appeal  to  your  historic  presence 
of  mind.  For  myself  I  could  only  attune  my  spirit  vaguely  to 
so  ponderous  a  challenge,  could  only  feel  I  was  breathing  an  air 
of  prodigious  records  and  relics.  I  conned  my  guide-book  and 
looked  up  at  the  great  mosaics,  and  then  fumbled  at  poor  Murray 
again  for  some  intenser  light  on  the  court  of  Justinian;  but  I  can 
imagine  that  to  a  visitor  more  intimate  with  the  originals  of  the 
various  great  almond-eyed  mosaic  portraits  in  the  vaults  of  the 
churches  these  extremely  curious  works  of  art  may  have  a  really 
formidable  interest.  I  found  in  the  place  at  large,  by  daylight, 
the  look  of  a  vast  straggling  depopulated  village.  The  streets 
with  hardly  an  exception  are  grass-grown,  and  though  I  walked 
about  all  day  I  failed  to  encounter  a  single  wheeled  vehicle.  I 
remember  no  shop  but  the  little  establishment  of  an  urbane  pho 
tographer,  whose  views  of  the  Pineta,  the  great  legendary  pine- 
forest  just  without  the  town,  gave  me  an  irresistible  desire  to  seek 
that  refuge.  There  was  no  architecture  to  speak  of;  and  though 

[47°] 


RAVENNA 

there  are  a  great  many  large  domiciles  with  aristocratic  names 
they  stand  cracking  and  baking  in  the  sun  in  no  very  comfort 
able  fashion.  The  houses  have  for  the  most  part  an  all  but  rustic 
rudeness;  they  are  low  and  featureless  and  shabby,  as  well  as 
interspersed  with  high  garden  walls  over  which  the  long  arms  of 
tangled  vines  hang  motionless  into  the  stagnant  streets.  Here  and 
there  in  all  this  dreariness,  in  some  particularly  silent  and  grassy 
corner,  rises  an  old  brick  church  with  a  front  more  or  less  spoiled 
by  cheap  modernisation,  and  a  strange  cylindrical  campanile 
pierced  with  small  arched  windows  and  extremely  suggestive  of 
the  fifth  century.  These  churches  constitute  the  palpable  interest 
of  Ravenna,  and  their  own  principal  interest,  after  thirteen  cen 
turies  of  well-intentioned  spoliation,  resides  in  their  unequalled 
collection  of  early  Christian  mosaics.  It  is  an  interest  simple,  as 
who  should  say,  almost  to  harshness,  and  leads  one's  attention 
along  a  straight  and  narrow  way.  There  are  older  churches  in 
Rome,  and  churches  which,  looked  at  as  museums,  are  more 
variously  and  richly  informing ;  but  in  Rome  you  stumble  at  every 
step  on  some  curious  pagan  memorial,  often  beautiful  enough 
to  make  your  thoughts  wander  far  from  the  strange  stiff  primitive 
Christian  forms. 

Ravenna,  on  the  other  hand,  began  with  the  Church,  and  all 
her  monuments  and  relics  are  harmoniously  rigid.  By  the  middle 
of  the  first  century  she  possessed  an  exemplary  saint,  Apollinaris, 
a  disciple  of  Peter,  to  whom  her  two  finest  places  of  worship  are 
dedicated.  It  was  to  one  of  these,  jocosely  entitled  the  "new," 
that  I  first  directed  my  steps.  I  lingered  outside  a  while  and  looked 

[471 1 


ITALIAN   HOURS 

at  the  great  red,  barrel-shaped  bell-towers,  so  rusty,  so  crum 
bling,  so  archaic,  and  yet  so  resolute  to  ring  in  another  century 
or  two,  and  then  went  in  to  the  coolness,  the  shining  marble 
columns,  the  queer  old  sculptured  slabs  and  sarcophagi  and  the 
long  mosaics  that  scintillated,  under  the  roof,  along  the  wall  of 
the  nave.  San  Apollinare  Nuovo,  like  most  of  its  companions,  is 
a  magazine  of  early  Christian  odds  and  ends ;  fragments  of  yellow 
marble  incrusted  with  quaint  sculptured  emblems  of  primitive 
dogma;  great  rough  troughs,  containing  the  bones  of  old  bishops; 
episcopal  chairs  with  the  marble  worn  narrow  by  centuries  of 
pressure  from  the  solid  episcopal  person;  slabs  from  the  fronts 
of  old  pulpits,  covered  with  carven  hierogylphics  of  an  almost 
Egyptian  abstruseness  —  lambs  and  stags  and  fishes  and  beasts 
of  theological  affinities  even  less  apparent.  Upon  all  these  strange 
things  the  strange  figures  in  the  great  mosaic  panorama  look 
down,  with  coloured  cheeks  and  staring  eyes,  lifelike  enough  to 
speak  to  you  and  answer  your  wonderment  and  tell  you  in  bad 
Latin  of  the  decadence  that  it  was  in  such  and  such  a  fashion 
they  believed  and  worshipped.  First,  on  each  side,  near  the  door, 
are  houses  and  ships  and  various  old  landmarks  of  Ravenna; 
then  begins  a  long  procession,  on  one  side,  of  twenty-two  white- 
robed  virgins  and  three  obsequious  magi,  terminating  in  a  throne 
bearing  the  Madonna  and  Child,  surrounded  by  four  angels;  on 
the  other  side,  of  an  equal  number  of  male  saints  (twenty-five, 
that  is)  holding  crowns  in  their  hands  and  leading  to  a  Saviour 
enthroned  between  angels  of  singular  expressiveness.  What  it  is 
these  long  slim  seraphs  express  I  cannot  quite  say,  but  they  have 

[472  ] 


I'll  .1 '  j 


SANT  APOLL1NARE  M'OVO.  KAYKNNA. 


RAVENNA 

an  odd,  knowing,  sidelong  look  out  of  the  narrow  ovals  of  their 
eyes  which,  though  not  without  sweetness,  would  certainly  make 
me  murmur  a  defensive  prayer  or  so  were  I  to  find  myself  alone 
in  the  church  towards  dusk.  All  this  work  is  of  the  latter  part 
of  the  sixth  century  and  brilliantly  preserved.  The  gold  back 
grounds  twinkle  as  if  they  had  been  inserted  yesterday,  and  here 
and  there  a  figure  is  executed  almost  too  much  in  the  modern 
manner  to  be  interesting;  for  the  charm  of  mosaic  work  is,  to 
my  sense,  confined  altogether  to  the  infancy  of  the  art.  The  great 
Christ,  in  the  series  of  which  I  speak,  is  quite  an  elaborate  pic 
ture,  and  yet  he  retains  enough  of  the  orthodox  stiffness  to  make 
him  impressive  in  the  simpler,  elder  sense.  He  is  clad  in  a  purple 
robe,  even  as  an  emperor,  his  hair  and  beard  are  artfully  curled, 
his  eyebrows  arched,  his  complexion  brilliant,  his  whole  aspect 
such  a  one  as  the  popular  mind  may  have  attributed  to  Honorius 
or  Valentinian.  It  is  all  very  Byzantine,  and  yet  I  found  in  it 
much  of  that  interest  which  is  inseparable,  to  a  facile  imagination, 
from  all  early  representations  of  our  Lord.  Practically  they  are 
no  more  authentic  than  the  more  or  less  plausible  inventions  of 
Ary  Scheffer  and  Holman  Hunt ;  in  spite  of  which  they  borrow 
a  certain  value,  factitious  perhaps  but  irresistible,  from  the  mere 
fact  that  they  are  twelve  or  thirteen  centuries  less  distant  from 
the  original.  It  is  something  that  this  was  the  way  the  people  in 
the  sixth  century  imagined  Jesus  to  have  looked;  the  image  has 
suffered  by  so  many  the  fewer  accretions.  The  great  purple- 
robed  monarch  on  the  wall  of  Ravenna  is  at  least  a  very  potent 
and  positive  Christ,  and  the  only  objection  I  have  to  make  to  him 

[473] 


ITALIAN   HOURS 

is  that  though  in  this  character  he  must  have  had  a  full  appor 
tionment  of  divine  foreknowledge  he  betrays  no  apprehension 
of  Dr.  Channing  and  M.  Renan.  If  one's  preference  lies,  for 
distinctness'  sake,  between  the  old  plainness  and  the  modern 
fantasy,  one  must  admit  that  the  plainness  has  here  a  very  grand 
outline. 

I  spent  the  rest  of  the  morning  in  charmed  transition  between 
the  hot  yellow  streets  and  the  cool  grey  interiors  of  the  churches. 
The  greyness  everywhere  was  lighted  up  by  the  scintillation,  on 
vault  and  entablature,  of  mosaics  more  or  less  archaic,  but  always 
brilliant  and  elaborate,  and  everywhere  too  by  the  same  deep 
amaze  of  the  fact  that,  while  centuries  had  worn  themselves  away 
and  empires  risen  and  fallen,  these  little  cubes  of  coloured  glass 
had  stuck  in  their  allotted  places  and  kept  their  freshness.  I 
have  no  space  for  a  list  of  the  various  shrines  so  distinguished, 
and,  to  tell  the  truth,  my  memory  of  them  has  already  become 
a  very  generalised  and  undiscriminated  record.  The  total  aspect 
of  the  place,  its  sepulchral  stillness,  its  absorbing  perfume  of 
evanescence  and  decay  and  mortality,  confounds  the  distinctions 
and  blurs  the  details.  The  Cathedral,  which  is  vast  and  high, 
has  been  excessively  modernised,  and  was  being  still  more  so  by 
a  lavish  application  of  tinsel  and  cotton-velvet  in  preparation  for 
the  centenary  feast  of  St.  Apollinaris,  which  befalls  next  month. 
Things  on  this  occasion  are  to  be  done  handsomely,  and  a  fair 
Ravennese  informed  me  that  a  single  family  had  contributed 
three  thousand  francs  towards  a  month's  vesper-music.  It  seemed 
to  me  hereupon  that  I  should  like  in  the  August  twilight  to  wan- 

[474] 


RAVENNA 

der  into  the  quiet  nave  of  San  Apollinare,  and  look  up  at  the  great 
mosaics  through  the  resonance  of  some  fine  chanting.  I  remem 
ber  distinctly  enough,  however,  the  tall  basilica  of  San  Vitale,  of 
octagonal  shape,  like  an  exchange  or  custom-house  —  modelled, 
I  believe,  upon  St.  Sophia  at  Constantinople.  It  has  a  great 
span  of  height  and  a  great  solemnity,  as  well  as  a  choir  densely 
pictured  over  on  arch  and  apse  with  mosaics  of  the  time  of 
Justinian.  These  are  regular  pictures,  full  of  movement,  ges 
ture  and  perspective,  and  just  enough  sobered  in  hue  by  time  to 
bring  home  their  remoteness.  In  the  middle  of  the  church,  under 
the  great  dome,  sat  an  artist  whom  I  envied,  making  at  an  effective 
angle  a  study  of  the  choir  and  its  broken  lights,  its  decorated  altar 
and  its  incrusted  twinkling  walls.  The  picture,  when  finished, 
will  hang,  I  suppose,  on  the  library  wall  of  some  person  of  taste ; 
but  even  if  it  is  much  better  than  is  probable  —  I  did  n't  look  at 
it  —  all  his  taste  won't  tell  the  owner,  unless  he  has  been  there, 
in  just  what  a  soundless,  mouldering,  out-of-the-way  corner  of 
old  Italy  it  was  painted.  An  even  better  place  for  an  artist  fond 
of  dusky  architectural  nooks,  except  that  here  the  dusk  is  exces 
sive  and  he  would  hardly  be  able  to  tell  his  green  from  his  red, 
is  the  extraordinary  little  church  of  the  Santi  Nazaro  e  Celso, 
otherwise  known  as  the  mausoleum  of  Galla  Placidia.  This  is 
perhaps  on  the  whole  the  spot  in  Ravenna  where  the  impression 
is  of  most  sovereign  authority  and  most  thrilling  force.  It  con 
sists  of  a  narrow  low-browed  cave,  shaped  like  a  Latin  cross, 
every  inch  of  which  except  the  floor  is  covered  with  dense  sym 
bolic  mosaics.  Before  you  and  on  each  side,  through  the  thick 

[475] 


ITALIAN   HOURS 

brown  light,  loom  three  enormous  barbaric  sarcophagi,  contain 
ing  the  remains  of  potentates  of  the  Lower  Empire.  It  is  as  if 
history  had  burrowed  under  ground  to  escape  from  research  and 
you  had  fairly  run  it  to  earth.  On  the  right  lie  the  ashes  of  the 
Emperor  Honorius,  and  in  the  middle  those  of  his  sister,  Galla 
Placidia,  a  lady  who,  I  believe,  had  great  adventures.  On  the 
other  side  rest  the  bones  of  Constantius  III.  The  place  might  be 
a  small  natural  grotto  lined  with  glimmering  mineral  substances, 
and  there  is  something  quite  tremendous  in  being  shut  up  so  closely 
with  these  three  imperial  ghosts.  The  shadow  of  the  great  Roman 
name  broods  upon  the  huge  sepulchres  and  abides  for  ever  within 
the  narrow  walls. 

But  still  other  memories  hang  about  than  those  of  primitive 
bishops  and  degenerate  emperors.  Byron  lived  here  and  Dante 
died  here,  and  the  tomb  of  the  one  poet  and  the  dwelling  of  the 
other  are  among  the  advertised  appeals.  The  grave  of  Dante, 
it  must  be  said,  is  anything  but  Dantesque,  and  the  whole  pre 
cinct  is  disposed  with  that  odd  vulgarity  of  taste  which  distin 
guishes  most  modern  Italian  tributes  to  greatness.  The  author  of 
The  Divine  Comedy  commemorated  in  stucco,  even  in  a  slum 
bering  corner  of  Ravenna,  is  not  "sympathetic."  Fortunately  of 
all  poets  he  least  needs  a  monument,  as  he  was  pre-eminently 
an  architect  in  diction  and  built  himself  his  temple  of  fame  in 
verses  more  solid  than  Cyclopean  blocks.  If  Dante's  tomb  is  not 
Dantesque,  so  neither  is  Byron's  house  Byronic,  being  a  homely, 
shabby,  two-storied  dwelling,  directly  on  the  street,  with  as  little 
as  possible  of  isolation  and  mystery.  In  Byron's  time  it  was 

[476 1 


RAVENNA 

an  inn,  and  it  is  rather  a  curious  reflection  that  "Cain"  and  the 
"Vision  of  Judgment"  should  have  been  written  at  an  hotel. 
The  fact  supplies  a  commanding  precedent  for  self-abstraction  to 
tourists  at  once  sentimental  and  literary.  I  must  declare  indeed 
that  my  acquaintance  with  Ravenna  considerably  increased  my 
esteem  for  Byron  and  helped  to  renew  my  faith  in  the  sincerity 
of  his  inspiration.  A  man  so  much  de  son  temps  as  the  author  of 
the  above-named  and  other  pieces  can  have  spent  two  long  years 
in  this  stagnant  city  only  by  the  help  of  taking  a  great  deal  of 
disinterested  pleasure  in  his  own  genius.  He  had  indeed  a  notable 
pastime  —  the  various  churches  are  adorned  with  monuments 
of  ancestral  Guicciolis  —  but  it  is  none  the  less  obvious  that  Ra 
venna,  fifty  years  ago,  would  have  been  an  intolerably  dull  resi 
dence  to  a  foreigner  of  distinction  unequipped  with  intellectual 
resources.  The  hour  one  spends  with  Byron's  memory  then  is 
almost  compassionate.  After  all,  one  says  to  one's  self  as  one 
turns  away  from  the  grandiloquent  little  slab  in  front  of  his  house 
and  looks  down  the  deadly  provincial  vista  of  the  empty,  sunny 
street,  the  author  of  so  many  superb  stanzas  asked  less  from  the 
world  than  he  gave  it.  One  of  his  diversions  was  to  ride  in  the 
Pineta,  which,  beginning  a  couple  of  miles  from  the  city,  extends 
some  twenty-five  miles  along  the  sands  of  the  Adriatic.  I  drove 
out  to  it  for  Byron's  sake,  and  Dante's,  and  Boccaccio's,  all  of 
whom  have  interwoven  it  with  their  fictions,  and  for  that  of 
a  possible  whiff  of  coolness  from  the  sea.  Between  the  city  and 
the  forest,  in  the  midst  of  malarious  rice-swamps,  stands  the  finest 
of  the  Ravennese  churches,  the  stately  temple  of  San  Apollinare 

[  477  ]   ' 


ITALIAN  HOURS 

in  Classe.  The  Emperor  Augustus  constructed  hereabouts  a  har 
bour  for  fleets,  which  the  ages  have  choked  up,  and  which  sur 
vives  only  in  the  title  of  this  ancient  church.  Its  extreme  loneliness 
makes  it  doubly  impressive.  They  opened  the  great  doors  for 
me,  and  let  a  shaft  of  heated  air  go  wander  up  the  beautiful  nave 
between  the  twenty-four  lustrous,  pearly  columns  of  cipollino  mar 
ble,  and  mount  the  wide  staircase  of  the  choir  and  spend  itself 
beneath  the  mosaics  of  the  vault.  I  passed  a  memorable  half- 
hour  sitting  in  this  wave  of  tempered  light,  looking  down  the  cool 
grey  avenue  of  the  nave,  out  of  the  open  door,  at  the  vivid  green 
swamps,  and  listening  to  the  melancholy  stillness.  I  rambled 
for  an  hour  in  the  Wood  of  Associations,  between  the  tall  smooth, 
silvery  stems  of  the  pines,  and  beside  a  creek  which  led  me  to 
the  outer  edge  of  the  wood  and  a  view  of  white  sails,  gleaming 
and  gliding  behind  the  sand-hills.  It  was  infinitely,  it  was  nobly 
"quaint,"  but,  as  the  trees  stand  at  wide  intervals  and  bear  far 
aloft  in  the  blue  air  but  a  little  parasol  of  foliage,  I  suppose 
that,  of  a  glaring  summer  day,  the  forest  itself  was  only  the  more 
characteristic  of  its  clime  and  country  for  being  perfectly  shade- 
less. 

1873- 


THE   SAINT'S   AFTERNOON    AND 
OTHERS 


THE  SAINT'S  AFTERNOON  AND 
OTHERS 

|EFORE  and  above  all  was  the  sense  that, 
with  the  narrow  limits  of  past  adventure,  I 
had  never  yet  had  such  an  impression  of 
what  the  summer  could  be  in  the  south  or 
the  south  in  the  summer;  but  I  promptly 
found  it,  for  the  occasion,  a  good  for 
tune  that  my  terms  of  comparison  were 
restricted.  It  was  really  something,  at  a 
time  when  the  stride  of  the  traveller  had  become  as  long  as  it 
was  easy,  when  the  seven-league  boots  positively  hung,  for  fre 
quent  use,  in  the  closet  of  the  most  sedentary,  to  have  kept  one's 
self  so  innocent  of  strange  horizons  that  the  Bay  of  Naples  in 
June  might  still  seem  quite  final.  That  picture  struck  me  —  a 
particular  corner  of  it  at  least,  and  for  many  reasons  —  as  the 
last  word ;  and  it  is  this  last  word  that  comes  back  to  me,  after  a 
short  interval,  in  a  green,  grey  northern  nook,  and  offers  me  again 
its  warm,  bright  golden  meaning  before  it  also  inevitably  catches 
the  chill.  Too  precious,  surely,  for  us  not  to  suffer  it  to  help  us 
as  it  may  is  the  faculty  of  putting  together  again  in  an  order  the 
sharp  minutes  and  hours  that  the  wave  of  time  has  been  as  ready 
to  pass  over  as  the  salt  sea  to  wipe  out  the  letters  and  words  your 


ITALIAN  HOURS 

stick  has  traced  in  the  sand.  Let  me,  at  any  rate,  recover  a  suffi 
cient  number  of  such  signs  to  make  a  sort  of  sense. 


FAR  aloft  on  the  great  rock  was  pitched,  as  the  first  note,  and 
indeed  the  highest,  of  the  wondrous  concert,  the  amazing  crea 
tion  of  the  friend  who  had  offered  me  hospitality,  and  whom, 
more  almost  than  I  had  ever  envied  any  one  anything,  I  envied 
the  privilege  of  being  able  to  reward  a  heated,  artless  pilgrim 
with  a  revelation  of  effects  so  incalculable.  There  was  none  but 
the  loosest  prefigurement  as  the  creaking  and  puffing  little  boat, 
which  had  conveyed  me  only  from  Sorrento,  drew  closer  beneath 
the  prodigious  island  —  beautiful,  horrible  and  haunted  —  that 
does  most,  of  all  the  happy  elements  and  accidents,  towards  mak 
ing  the  Bay  of  Naples,  for  the  study  of  composition,  a  lesson  in  the 
grand  style.  There  was  only,  above  and  below,  through  the  blue 
of  the  air  and  sea,  a  great  confused  shining  of  hot  cliffs  and  crags 
and  buttresses,  a  loss,  from  nearness,  of  the  splendid  couchant 
outline  and  the  more  comprehensive  mass,  and  an  opportunity 
—  oh,  not  lost,  I  assure  you  —  to  sit  and  meditate,  even  moralise, 
on  the  empty  deck,  while  a  happy  brotherhood  of  American  and 
German  tourists,  including,  of  course,  many  sisters,  scrambled 
down  into  little  waiting,  rocking  tubs  and,  after  a  few  strokes, 
popped  systematically  into  the  small  orifice  of  the  Blue  Grotto. 
There  was  an  appreciable  moment  when  they  were  all  lost  to  view 

[482  ] 


THE   SAINT'S   AFTERNOON 

in  that  receptacle,  the  daily  " psychological"  moment  during 
which  it  must  so  often  befall  the  recalcitrant  observer  on  the  de 
serted  deck  to  find  himself  aware  of  how  delightful  it  might  be 
if  none  of  them  should  come  out  again.  The  charm,  the  fascina 
tion  of  the  idea  is  not  a  little  —  though  also  not  wholly  —  in  the 
fact  that,  as  the  wave  rises  over  the  aperture,  there  is  the  most 
encouraging  appearance  that  they  perfectly  may  not.  There  it 
is.  There  is  no  more  of  them.  It  is  a  case  to  which  nature  has, 
by  the  neatest  stroke  and  with  the  best  taste  in  the  world,  just 
quietly  attended. 

Beautiful,  horrible,  haunted :  that  is  the  essence  of  what,  about 
itself,  Capri  says  to  you  —  dip  again  into  your  Tacitus  and  see 
why ;  and  yet,  while  you  roast  a  little  under  the  awning  and  in  the 
vaster  shadow,  it  is  not  because  the  trail  of  Tiberius  is  inefface 
able  that  you  are  most  uneasy.  The  trail  of  Germanicus  in  Italy 
to-day  ramifies  further  and  bites  perhaps  even  deeper;  a  proof 
of  which  is,  precisely,  that  his  eclipse  in  the  Blue  Grotto  is  inex 
orably  brief,  that  here  he  is  popping  out  again,  bobbing  enthu 
siastically  back  and  scrambling  triumphantly  back.  The  spirit,  in 
truth,  of  his  effective  appropriation  of  Capri  has  a  broad-faced 
candour  against  which  there  is  no  standing  up,  supremely  express 
ive  as  it  is  of  the  well-known  "love  that  kills/'  of  Germanicus's 
fatal  susceptibility.  If  I  were  to  let  myself,  however,  incline 
to  that  aspect  of  the  serious  case  of  Capri  I  should  embark  on 
strange  depths.  The  straightness  and  simplicity,  the  classic,  syn 
thetic  directness  of  the  German  passion  for  Italy,  make  this  pas 
sion  probably  the  sentiment  in  the  world  that  is  in  the  act  of 

[483  ] 


ITALIAN   HOURS 

supplying  enjoyment  In  the  largest,  sweetest  mouthfuls;  and  there 
is  something  unsurpassably  marked  in  the  way  that  on  this  irre 
sistible  shore  it  has  seated  itself  to  ruminate  and  digest.  It  keeps 
the  record  in  its  own  loud  accents;  it  breaks  out  in  the  folds  of 
the  hills  and  on  the  crests  of  the  crags  into  every  manner  of  symp 
tom  and  warning.  Huge  advertisements  and  portents  stare  across 
the  bay;  the  acclivities  bristle  with  breweries  and  "restorations" 
and  with  great  ugly  Gothic  names.  I  hasten,  of  course,  to  add 
that  some  such  general  consciousness  as  this  may  well  oppress, 
under  any  sky,  at  the  century's  end,  the  brooding  tourist  who 
makes  himself  a  prey  by  staying  anywhere,  when  the  gong  sounds, 
"behind."  It  is  behind,  in  the  track  and  the  reaction,  that  he 
least  makes  out  the  end  of  it  all,  perceives  that  to  visit  any  one's 
country  for  any  one's  sake  is  more  and  more  to  find  some  one 
quite  other  in  possession.  No  one,  least  of  all  the  brooder  himself, 
is  in  his  own. 


II 


I  CERTAINLY,  at  any  rate,  felt  the  force  of  this  truth  when,  on 
scaling  the  general  rock  with  the  eye  of  apprehension,  I  made  out 
at  a  point  much  nearer  its  summit  than  its  base  the  gleam  of  a 
dizzily-perched  white  sea-gazing  front  which  I  knew  for  my  par 
ticular  landmark  and  which  promised  so  much  that  it  would  have 
been  welcome  to  keep  even  no  more  than  half.  Let  me  instantly 
say  that  it  kept  still  more  than  it  promised,  and  by  no  means  least 

[484  ] 


THE   SAINT'S   AFTERNOON 

in  the  way  of  leaving  far  below  it  the  worst  of  the  outbreak  of 
restorations  and  breweries.  There  is  a  road  at  present  to  the 
upper  village,  with  which  till  recently  communication  was  all  by 
rude  steps  cut  in  the  rock  and  diminutive  donkeys  scrambling 
on  the  flints ;  one  of  those  fine  flights  of  construction  which  the 
great  road-making  "Latin  races"  take,  wherever  they  prevail, 
without  advertisement  or  bombast;  and  even  while  I  followed 
along  the  face  of  the  cliff  its  climbing  consolidated  ledge,  I  asked 
myself  how  I  could  think  so  well  of  it  without  consistently  think 
ing  better  still  of  the  temples  of  beer  so  obviously  destined  to 
enrich  its  terminus.  The  perfect  answer  to  that  was  of  course 
that  the  brooding  tourist  is  never  bound  to  be  consistent.  What 
happier  law  for  him  than  this  very  one,  precisely,  when  on  at 
last  alighting,  high  up  in  the  blue  air,  to  stare  and  gasp  and 
almost  disbelieve,  he  embraced  little  by  little  the  beautiful  truth 
particularly,  on  this  occasion,  reserved  for  himself,  and  took  in 
the  stupendous  picture  ?  For  here  above  all  had  the  thought 
and  the  hand  come  from  far  away  —  even  from  ultima  Thule,  and 
yet  were  in  possession  triumphant  and  acclaimed.  Well,  all  one 
could  say  was  that  the  way  they  had  felt  their  opportunity,  the 
divine  conditions  of  the  place,  spoke  of  the  advantage  of  some 
such  intellectual  perspective  as  a  remote  original  standpoint  alone 
perhaps  can  give.  If  what  had  finally,  with  infinite  patience, 
passion,  labour,  taste,  got  itself  done  there,  was  like  some  supreme 
reward  of  an  old  dream  of  Italy,  something  perfect  after  long 
delays,  was  it  not  verily  in  ultima  Thule  that  the  vow  would  have 
been  piously  enough  made  and  the  germ  tenderly  enough  nursed  ? 

[485  J 


ITALIAN   HOURS 

For  a  certain  art  of  asking  of  Italy  all  she  can  give,  you  must 
doubtless  either  be  a  rare  raffine  or  a  rare  genius,  a  sophisticated 
Norseman  or  just  a  Gabriele  d'  Annunzio. 

All  she  can  give  appeared  to  me,  assuredly,  for  that  day  and 
the  following,  gathered  up  and  enrolled  there:  in  the  wondrous 
cluster  and  dispersal  of  chambers,  corners,  courts,  galleries, 
arbours,  arcades,  long  white  ambulatories  and  vertiginous  points 
of  view.  The  greatest  charm  of  all  perhaps  was  that,  thanks 
to  the  particular  conditions,  she  seemed  to  abound,  to  overflow, 
in  directions  in  which  I  had  never  yet  enjoyed  the  chance  to  find 
her  so  free.  The  indispensable  thing  was  therefore,  in  observa 
tion,  in  reflection,  to  press  the  opportunity  hard,  to  recognise 
that  as  the  abundance  was  splendid,  so,  by  the  same  stroke,  it 
was  immensely  suggestive.  It  dropped  into  one's  lap,  naturally, 
at  the  end  of  an  hour  or  two,  the  little  white  flower  of  its  formula : 
the  brooding  tourist,  in  other  words,  could  only  continue  to  brood 
till  he  had  made  out  in  a  measure,  as  I  may  say,  what  was  so 
wonderfully  the  matter  with  him.  He  was  simply  then  in  the 
presence,  more  than  ever  yet,  of  the  possible  poetry  of  the  per 
sonal  and  social  life  of  the  south,  and  the  fun  would  depend 
much  —  as  occasions  are  fleeting  —  on  his  arriving  in  time,  in  the 
interest  of  that  imagination  which  is  his  only  field  of  sport,  at 
adequate  new  notations  of  it.  The  sense  of  all  this,  his  obscure 
and  special  fun  in  the  general  bravery,  mixed,  on  the  morrow, 
with  the  long,  human  hum  of  the  bright,  hot  day  and  filled  up  the 
golden  cup  with  questions  and  answers.  The  feast  of  St.  Antony, 
the  patron  of  the  upper  town,  was  the  one  thing  in  the  air,  and 

[486] 


THE    SAINT'S   AFTERNOON 

of  the  private  beauty  of  the  place,  there  on  the  narrow  shelf,  in 
the  shining,  shaded  loggias  and  above  the  blue  gulfs,  all  comers 
were  to  be  made  free. 


Ill 


THE  church-feast  of  its  saint  is  of  course  for  Anacapri,  as  for  any 
self-respecting  Italian  town,  the  great  day  of  the  year,  and  the 
smaller  the  small  "country,"  in  native  parlance,  as  well  as  the 
simpler,  accordingly,  the  life,  the  less  the  chance  for  leakage,  on 
other  pretexts,  of  the  stored  wine  of  loyalty.  This  pure  fluid,  it 
was  easy  to  feel  overnight,  had  not  sensibly  lowered  its  level; 
so  that  nothing  indeed,  when  the  hour  came,  could  well  exceed 
the  outpouring.  All  up  and  down  the  Sorrentine  promontory 
the  early  summer  happens  to  be  the  time  of  the  saints,  and  I  had 
just  been  witness  there  of  a  week  on  every  day  of  which  one  might 
have  travelled,  through  kicked-up  clouds  and  other  demonstra 
tions,  to  a  different  hot  holiday.  There  had  been  no  bland  even 
ing  that,  somewhere  or  other,  in  the  hills  or  by  the  sea,  the  white 
dust  and  the  red  glow  did  n't  rise  to  the  dim  stars.  Dust,  perspi 
ration,  illumination,  conversation  —  these  were  the  regular  ele 
ments.  "They're  very  civilised,"  a  friend  who  knows  them  as 
well  as  they  can  be  known  had  said  to  me  of  the  people  in  gen 
eral;  "plenty  of  fireworks  and  plenty  of  talk  —  that's  all  they  ever 
want."  That  they  were  "civilised"  —on  the  side  on  which  they 
were  most  to  show  —  was  therefore  to  be  the  word  of  the  whole 

[487] 


ITALIAN   HOURS 

business,  and  nothing  could  have,  in  fact,  had  more  interest  than 
the  meaning  that  for  the  thirty-six  hours  I  read  into  it. 

Seen  from  below  and  diminished  by  distance,  Anacapri  makes 
scarce  a  sign,  and  the  road  that  leads  to  it  is  not  traceable  over 
the  rock ;  but  it  sits  at  its  ease  on  its  high,  wide  table,  of  which 
it  covers  —  and  with  picturesque  southern  culture  as  well  —  as 
much  as  it  finds  convenient.  As  much  of  it  as  possible  was 
squeezed  all  the  morning,  for  St.  Antony,  into  the  piazzetta  be 
fore  the  church,  and  as  much  more  into  that  edifice  as  the  robust 
odour  mainly  prevailing  there  allowed  room  for.  It  was  the 
odour  that  was  in  prime  occupation,  and  one  could  only  wonder 
how  so  many  men,  women  and  children  could  cram  themselves 
into  so  much  smell.  It  was  surely  the  smell,  thick  and  resisting, 
that  was  least  successfully  to  be  elbowed.  Meanwhile  the  good 
saint,  before  he  could  move  into  the  air,  had,  among  the  tapers 
and  the  tinsel,  the  opera-music  and  the  pulpit  poundings,  bravely 
to  snuff  it  up.  The  shade  outside  was  hot,  and  the  sun  was  hot; 
but  we  waited  as  densely  for  him  to  come  out,  or  rather  to  come 
"on,"  as  the  pit  at  the  opera  waits  for  the  great  tenor.  There 
were  people  from  below  and  people  from  the  mainland  and  people 
from  Pomerania  and  a  brass  band  from  Naples.  There  were 
other  figures  at  the  end  of  longer  strings  —  strings  that,  some  of 
them  indeed,  had  pretty  well  given  way  and  were  now  but  little 
snippets  trailing  in  the  dust.  Oh,  the  queer  sense  of  the  good  old 
Capri  of  artistic  legend,  of  which  the  name  itself  was,  in  the  more 
benighted  years  —  years  of  the  contadina  and  the  pifferaro  — 
a  bright  evocation !  Oh,  the  echo,  on  the  spot,  of  each  romantic 

[488 1 


THE    SAINT'S   AFTERNOON 

tale!  Oh,  the  loafing  painters,  so  bad  and  so  happy,  the  conscious 
models,  the  vague  personalities!  The  "beautiful  Capri  girl" 
was  of  course  not  missed,  though  not  perhaps  so  beautiful  as  in 
her  ancient  glamour,  which  none  the  less  did  n't  at  all  exclude 
the  probable  presence  —  with  his  legendary  light  quite  undimmed 
—  of  the  English  lord  in  disguise  who  will  at  no  distant  date 
marry  her.  The  whole  thing  was  there;  one  held  it  in  one's 
hand. 

The  saint  comes  out  at  last,  borne  aloft  in  long  procession  and 
under  a  high  canopy:  a  rejoicing,  staring,  smiling  saint,  openly 
delighted  with  the  one  happy  hour  in  the  year  on  which  he  may 
take  his  own  walk.  Frocked  and  tonsured,  but  not  at  all  macer 
ated,  he  holds  in  his  hand  a  small  wax  puppet  of  an  infant  Jesus 
and  shows  him  to  all  their  friends,  to  whom  he  nods  and  bows: 
to  whom,  in  the  dazzle  of  the  sun  he  literally  seems  to  grin  and 
wink,  while  his  litter  sways  and  his  banners  flap  and  every  one 
gaily  greets  him.  The  ribbons  and  draperies  flutter,  and  the 
white  veils  of  the  marching  maidens,  the  music  blares  and  the 
guns  go  off  and  the  chants  resound,  and  it  is  all  as  holy  and  merry 
and  noisy  as  possible.  The  procession  —  down  to  the  delightful 
little  tinselled  and  bare-bodied  babies,  miniature  St.  Antonys 
irrespective  of  sex,  led  or  carried  by  proud  papas  or  brown 
grandsires  —  includes  so  much  of  the  population  that  you  mar 
vel  there  is  such  a  muster  to  look  on  —  like  the  charades  given 
in  a  family  in  which  every  one  wants  to  act.  But  it  is  all  indeed 
in  a  manner  one  house,  the  little  high-niched  island  community, 
and  nobody  therefore,  even  in  the  presence  of  the  head  of  it,  puts 

[489] 


ITALIAN   HOURS 

on  an  air  of  solemnity.  Singular  and  suggestive  before  every 
thing  else  is  the  absence  of  any  approach  to  our  notion  of  the 
posture  of  respect,  and  this  among  people  whose  manners  in 
general  struck  one  as  so  good  and,  in  particular,  as  so  cultivated. 
The  office  of  the  saint  —  of  which  the  festa  is  but  the  annual 
reaffirmation  —  involves  not  the  faintest  attribute  of  remoteness 
or  mystery. 

While,  with  my  friend,  I  waited  for  him,  we  went  for  coolness 
into  the  second  church  of  the  place,  a  considerable  and  bedizened 
structure,  with  the  rare  curiosity  of  a  wondrous  pictured  pave 
ment  of  majolica,  the  garden  of  Eden  done  in  large  coloured  tiles 
or  squares,  with  every  beast,  bird  and  river,  and  a  brave  diminu 
endo,  in  especial,  from  portal  to  altar,  of  perspective,  so  that 
the  animals  and  objects  of  the  foreground  are  big  and  those  of 
the  successive  distances  differ  with  much  propriety.  Here  in  the 
sacred  shade  the  old  women  were  knitting,  gossipping,  yawning, 
shuffling  about;  here  the  children  were  romping  and  "larking"; 
here,  in  a  manner,  were  the  open  parlour,  the  nursery,  the  kin 
dergarten  and  the  conversazione  of  the  poor.  This  is  everywhere 
the  case  by  the  southern  sea.  I  remember  near  Sorrento  a  way 
side  chapel  that  seemed  the  scene  of  every  function  of  domestic 
life,  including  cookery  and  others.  The  odd  thing  is  that  it  all 
appears  to  interfere  so  little  with  that  special  civilised  note  — 
the  note  of  manners  —  which  is  so  constantly  touched.  It  is 
barbarous  to  expectorate  in  the  temple  of  your  faith,  but  that 
doubtless  is  an  extreme  case.  Is  civilisation  really  measured  by 
the  number  of  things  people  do  respect  ?  There  would  seem  to  be 

[  49°  1 


THE   SAINT'S   AFTERNOON 

much  evidence  against  it.  The  oldest  societies,  the  societies  with 
most  traditions,  are  naturally  not  the  least  ironic,  the  least  blasees, 
and  the  African  tribes  who  take  so  many  things  into  account 
that  they  fear  to  quit  their  huts  at  night  are  not  the  fine  flower. 


IV 


WHERE,  on  the  other  hand,  it  was  impossible  not  to  feel  to  the 
full  all  the  charming  riguardi  —  to  use  their  own  good  word  — 
in  which  our  friends  could  abound,  was,  that  afternoon,  in  the 
extraordinary  temple  of  art  and  hospitality  that  had  been  benig- 
nantly  opened  to  me.  Hither,  from  three  o'clock  to  seven,  all 
the  world,  from  the  small  in  particular  to  the  smaller  and  the 
smallest,  might  freely  flock,  and  here,  from  the  first  hour  to  the 
last,  the  huge  straw-bellied  flasks  of  purple  wine  were  tilted  for 
all  the  thirsty.  They  were  many,  the  thirsty,  they  were  three 
hundred,  they  were  unending ;  but  the  draughts  they  drank  were 
neither  countable  nor  counted.  This  boon  was  dispensed  in  a 
long,  pillared  portico,  where  everything  was  white  and  light  save 
the  blue  of  the  great  bay  as  it  played  up  from  far  below  or  as  you 
took  it  in,  between  shining  columns,  with  your  elbows  on  the 
parapet.  Sorrento  and  Vesuvius  were  over  against  you;  Naples 
furthest  off,  melted,  in  the  middle  of  the  picture,  into  shimmer 
ing  vagueness  and  innocence;  and  the  long  arm  of  Posilippo 
and  the  presence  of  the  other  islands,  Procida,  the  stricken  Ischia, 
made  themselves  felt  to  the  left.  The  grand  air  of  it  all  was  in 


ITALIAN   HOURS 

one's  very  nostrils  and  seemed  to  come  from  sources  too  numer 
ous  and  too  complex  to  name.  It  was  antiquity  in  solution,  with 
every  brown,  mild  figure,  every  note  of  the  old  speech,  every  tilt 
of  the  great  flask,  every  shadow  cast  by  every  classic  fragment, 
adding  its  touch  to  the  impression.  What  was  the  secret  of  the 
surprising  amenity  ?  —  to  the  essence  of  which  one  got  no  nearer 
than  simply  by  feeling  afresh  the  old  story  of  the  deep  interfusion 
of  the  present  with  the  past.  You  had  felt  that  often  before,  and 
all  that  could,  at  the  most,  help  you  now  was  that,  more  than  ever 
yet,  the  present  appeared  to  become  again  really  classic,  to  sigh 
with  strange  elusive  sounds  of  Virgil  and  Theocritus.  Heaven 
only  knows  how  little  they  would  in  truth  have  had  to  say  to  it, 
but  we  yield  to  these  visions  as  we  must,  and  when  the  imagina 
tion  fairly  turns  in  its  pain  almost  any  soft  name  is  good  enough 
to  soothe  it. 

It  threw  such  difficulties  but  a  step  back  to  say  that  the  secret 
of  the  amenity  was  "style";  for  what  in  the  world  was  the  se 
cret  of  style,  which  you  might  have  followed  up  and  down  the 
abysmal  old  Italy  for  so  many  a  year  only  to  be  still  vainly  calling 
for  it  ?  Everything,  at  any  rate,  that  happy  afternoon,  in  that 
place  of  poetry,  was  bathed  and  blessed  with  it.  The  castle  of 
Barbarossa  had  been  on  the  height  behind ;  the  villa  of  black 
Tiberius  had  overhung  the  immensity  from  the  right;  the  white 
arcades  and  the  cool  chambers  offered  to  every  step  some  sweet 
old  "piece"  of  the  past,  some  rounded  porphyry  pillar  support 
ing  a  bust,  some  shaft  of  pale  alabaster  upholding  a  trellis,  some 
mutilated  marble  image,  some  bronze  that  had  roughly  resisted. 

[492  ] 


THE   SAINT'S   AFTERNOON 

Our  host,  if  we  came  to  that,  had  the  secret ;  but  he  could  only 
express  it  in  grand  practical  ways.  One  of  them  was  precisely 
this  wonderful  "afternoon  tea,"  in  which  tea  only  —  that,  good 
as  it  is,  has  never  the  note  of  style  —  was  not  to  be  found.  The 
beauty  and  the  poetry,  at  all  events,  were  clear  enough,  and 
the  extraordinary  uplifted  distinction;  but  where,  in  all  this,  it 
may  be  asked,  was  the  element  of  "horror"  that  I  have  spoken 
of  as  sensible  ?  —  what  obsession  that  was  not  charming  could 
find  a  place  in  that  splendid  light,  out  of  which  the  long  sum 
mer  squeezes  every  secret  and  shadow  ?  I  'm  afraid  I  'm  driven 
to  plead  that  these  evils  were  exactly  in  one's  imagination,  a  pre 
destined  victim  always  of  the  cruel,  the  fatal  historic  sense.  To 
make  so  much  distinction,  how  much  history  had  been  needed ! 
—  so  that  the  whole  air  still  throbbed  and  ached  with  it,  as  with 
an  accumulation  of  ghosts  to  whom  the  very  climate  was  pitiless, 
condemning  them  to  blanch  for  ever  in  the  general  glare  and 
grandeur,  offering  them  no  dusky  northern  nook,  no  place  at 
the  friendly  fireside,  no  shelter  of  legend  or  song. 


MY  friend  had,  among  many  original  relics,  in  one  of  his  white 
galleries  —  and  how  he  understood  the  effect  and  the  "value "of 
whiteness !  —  two  or  three  reproductions  of  the  finest  bronzes  of 
the  Naples  museum,  the  work  of  a  small  band  of  brothers  whom 
he  had  found  himself  justified  in  trusting  to  deal  with  their  problem 

[493] 


ITALIAN   HOURS 

honourably  and  to  bring  forth  something  as  different  as  possible 
from  the  usual  compromise  of  commerce.  They  had  brought 
forth,  in  especial,  for  him,  a  copy  of  the  young  resting,  slightly- 
panting  Mercury  which  it  was  a  pure  delight  to  live  with,  and 
they  had  come  over  from  Naples  on  St.  Antony's  eve,  as  they  had 
done  the  year  before,  to  report  themselves  to  their  patron,  to  keep 
up  good  relations,  to  drink  Capri  wine  and  to  join  in  the  taran 
tella.  They  arrived  late,  while  we  were  at  supper;  they  received 
their  welcome  and  their  billet,  and  I  am  not  sure  it  was  not  the 
conversation  and  the  beautiful  manners  of  these  obscure  young 
men  that  most  fixed  in  my  mind  for  the  time  the  sense  of  the  side 
of  life  that,  all  around,  was  to  come  out  strongest.  It  would  be 
artless,  no  doubt,  to  represent  them  as  high  types  of  innocence 
or  even  of  energy  —  at  the  same  time  that,  weighing  them  against 
some  ruder  folk  of  our  own  race,  we  might  perhaps  have  made 
bold  to  place  their  share  even  of  these  qualities  in  the  scale.  It 
was  an  impression  indeed  never  infrequent  in  Italy,  of  which  I 
might,  in  these  days,  first  have  felt  the  force  during  a  stay,  just 
earlier,  with  a  friend  at  Sorrento  —  a  friend  who  had  good-na 
turedly  "had  in,"  on  his  wondrous  terrace,  after  dinner,  for  the 
pleasure  of  the  gaping  alien,  the  usual  local  quartette,  violins, 
guitar  and  flute,  the  musical  barber,  the  musical  tailor,  sadler, 
joiner,  humblest  sons  of  the  people  and  exponents  of  Neapolitan 
song.  Neapolitan  song,  as  we  know,  has  been  blown  well  about 
the  world,  and  it  is  late  in  the  day  to  arrive  with  a  ravished 
ear  for  it.  That,  however,  was  scarcely  at  all,  for  me,  the  ques 
tion  :  the  question,  on  the  Sorrento  terrace,  so  high  up  in  the  cool 

[494] 


THE   SAINT'S   AFTERNOON 

Capri  night,  was  of  the  present  outlook,  in  the  world,  for  the 
races  with  whom  it  has  been  a  tradition,  in  intercourse,  positively 
to  please. 

The  personal  civilisation,  for  intercourse,  of  the  musical  bar 
ber  and  tailor,  of  the  pleasant  young  craftsmen  of  my  other 
friend's  company,  was  something  that  could  be  trusted  to  make 
the  brooding  tourist  brood  afresh  —  to  say  more  to  him  in  fact, 
all  the  rest  of  the  second  occasion,  than  everything  else  put  to 
gether.  The  happy  address,  the  charming  expression,  the  indis 
tinctive  discretion,  the  complete  eclipse,  in  short,  of  vulgarity  and 
brutality  —  these  things  easily  became  among  these  people  the 
supremely  suggestive  note,  begetting  a  hundred  hopes  and  fears 
as  to  the  place  that,  with  the  present  general  turn  of  affairs 
about  the  globe,  is  being  kept  for  them.  They  are  perhaps  what 
the  races  politically  feeble  have  still  most  to  contribute  —  but 
what  appears  to  be  the  happy  prospect  for  the  races  politically 
feeble  ?  And  so  the  afternoon  waned,  among  the  mellow  marbles 
and  the  pleasant  folk  —  the  purple  wine  flowed,  the  golden  light 
faded,  song  and  dance  grew  free  and  circulation  slightly  embar 
rassed.  But  the  great  impression  remained  and  finally  was  ex 
quisite.  It  was  all  purple  wine,  all  art  and  song,  and  nobody  a 
grain  the  worse.  It  was  fireworks  and  conversation  —  the  for 
mer,  in  the  piazzetta,  were  to  come  later ;  it  was  civilisation  and 
amenity.  I  took  in  the  greater  picture,  but  I  lost  nothing  else; 
and  I  talked  with  the  contadini  about  antique  sculpture.  No, 
nobody  was  a  grain  the  worse ;  and  I  had  plenty  to  think  of.  So 
it  was  I  was  quickened  to  remember  that  we  others,  we  of  my 

[495] 


ITALIAN   HOURS 

own  country,  as  a  race  politically  not  weak,  had  —  by  what  I 
had  somewhere  just  heard  —  opened  "three  hundred  *  saloons'" 
at  Manila. 


VI 


THE  "other"  afternoons  I  here  pass  on  to  —  and  I  may  include 
in  them,  for  that  matter,  various  mornings  scarce  less  charm 
ingly  sacred  to  memory  —  were  occasions  of  another  and  a  later 
year;  a  brief  but  all  felicitous  impression  of  Naples  itself,  and 
of  the  approach  to  it  from  Rome,  as  well  as  of  the  return  to 
Rome  by  a  different  wonderful  way,  which  I  feel  I  shall  be  wise 
never  to  attempt  to  "improve  on."  Let  me  muster  assurance  to 
confess  that  this  comparatively  recent  and  superlatively  rich 
reminiscence  gives  me  for  its  first  train  of  ineffable  images  those 
of  a  motor-run  that,  beginning  betimes  of  a  splendid  June  day, 
and  seeing  me,  with  my  genial  companions,  blissfully  out  of 
Porta  San  Paolo,  hung  over  us  thus  its  benediction  till  the  splen 
dour  had  faded  in  the  lamplit  rest  of  the  Chiaja.  "We'll  go  by 
the  mountains,"  my  friend,  of  the  chariot  of  fire,  had  said,  "and 
we  '11  come  back,  after  three  days,  by  the  sea  " ;  which  handsome 
promise  flowered  into  such  flawless  performance  that  I  could 
but  feel  it  to  have  closed  and  rounded  for  me,  beyond  any  further 
rehandling,  the  long-drawn  rather  indeed  than  thick-studded 
chaplet  of  my  visitations  of  Naples  —  from  the  first,  seasoned 
with  the  highest  sensibility  of  youth,  forty  years  ago,  to  this  last 
the  other  day.  I  find  myself  noting  with  interest  —  and  just  to 

[496  ] 


THE  SAINT'S   AFTERNOON 

be  able  to  emphasise  it  is  what  inspires  me  with  these  remarks 

—  that,  in  spite  of  the  milder  and  smoother  and  perhaps,  picto- 
rially  speaking,  considerably  emptier,  Neapolitan  face  of  things, 
things  in  general,  of  our  later  time,  I  recognised  in  my  final  im 
pression  a  grateful,  a  beguiling  serenity.  The  place  is  at  the  best 
wild  and  weird  and  sinister,  and  yet  seemed  on  this  occasion  to 
be  seated  more  at  her  ease  in  her  immense  natural  dignity.   My 
disposition  to  feel  that,  I  hasten  to  add,  was  doubtless  my  own 
secret;  my  three  beautiful  days,  at  any  rate,  filled  themselves 
with  the  splendid  harmony,  several  of  the  minor  notes  of  which 
ask  for  a  place,  such  as  it  may  be,  just  here. 

Wondrously,  it  was  a  clean  and  cool  and,  as  who  should  say, 
quiet  and  amply  interspaced  Naples  —  in  tune  with  itself,  no 
harsh  jangle  of  forestieri  vulgarising  the  concert.  I  seemed  in 
fact,  under  the  blaze  of  summer,  the  only  stranger  —  though  the 
blaze  of  summer  itself  was,  for  that  matter,  everywhere  but  a 
higher  pitch  of  light  and  colour  and  tradition,  and  a  lower  pitch 
of  everything  else;  even,  it  struck  me,  of  sound  and  fury.  The 
appeal  in  short  was  genial,  and,  faring  out  to  Pompeii  of  a  Sun 
day  afternoon,  I  enjoyed  there,  for  the  only  time  I  can  recall,  the 
sweet  chance  of  a  late  hour  or  two,  the  hour  of  the  lengthening 
shadows,  absolutely  alone.  The  impression  remains  ineffaceable 

—  it  was  to  supersede  half-a-dozen  other  mixed  memories,  the 
sense  that  had  remained  with  me,  from  far  back,  of  a  pilgrim 
age  always  here  beset  with  traps  and  shocks  and  vulgar  impor 
tunities,  achieved  under  fatal  discouragements.    Even  Pompeii, 
in  fine,  haunt  of  all  the  cockneys  of  creation,  burned  itself,  in 

[497  ] 


ITALIAN   HOURS 

the  warm  still  eventide,  as  clear  as  glass,  or  as  the  glow  of  a  pale 
topaz,  and  the  particular  cockney  who  roamed  without  a  plan 
and  at  his  ease,  but  with  his  feet  on  Roman  slabs,  his  hands  on 
Roman  stones,  his  eyes  on  the  Roman  void,  his  consciousness 
really  at  last  of  some  good  to  him,  could  open  himself  as  never 
before  to  the  fond  luxurious  fallacy  of  a  close  communion, 
a  direct  revelation.  With  which  there  were  other  moments 
for  him  not  less  the  fruit  of  the  slow  unfolding  of  time;  the 
clearest  of  these  again  being  those  enjoyed  on  the  terrace  of  a 
small  island-villa  —  the  island  a  rock  and  the  villa  a  wondrous 
little  rock-garden,  unless  a  better  term  would  be  perhaps  rock- 
salon,  just  off  the  extreme  point  of  Posilippo  and  where,  thanks 
to  a  friendliest  hospitality,  he  was  to  hang  ecstatic,  through 
another  sublime  afternoon,  on  the  wave  of  a  magical  wand.  Here, 
as  happened,  were  charming  wise,  original  people  even  down 
to  delightful  amphibious  American  children,  enamelled  by  the 
sun  of  the  Bay  as  for  figures  of  miniature  Tritons  and  Nereids 
on  a  Renaissance  plaque ;  and  above  all,  on  the  part  of  the  gen 
eral  prospect,  a  demonstration  of  the  grand  style  of  composition 
and  effect  that  one  was  never  to  wish  to  see  bettered.  The  way 
in  which  the  Italian  scene  on  such  occasions  as  this  seems  to 
purify  itself  to  the  transcendent  and  perfect  idea  alone  —  idea 
of  beauty,  of  dignity,  of  comprehensive  grace,  with  all  accidents 
merged,  all  defects  disowned,  all  experience  outlived,  and  to 
gather  itself  up  into  the  mere  mute  eloquence  of  what  has  just 
incalculably  been,  remains  for  ever  the  secret  and  the  lesson  of 
the  subtlest  daughter  of  History.  All  one  could  do,  at  the  heart 

[498  ] 


THE   SAINT'S   AFTERNOON 

of  the  overarching  crystal,  and  in  presence  of  the  relegated  City, 
the  far-trailing  Mount,  the  grand  Sorrentine  headland,  the  islands 
incomparably  stationed  and  related,  was  to  wonder  what  may 
well  become  of  the  so  many  other  elements  of  any  poor  human  and 
social  complexus,  what  might  become  of  any  successfully  working 
or  only  struggling  and  floundering  civilisation  at  all,  when  high 
Natural  Elegance  proceeds  to  take  such  exclusive  charge  and 
recklessly  assume,  as  it  were,  all  the  responsibilities. 


VII 


THIS  indeed  had  been  quite  the  thing  I  was  asking  myself  all  the 
wondrous  way  down  from  Rome,  and  was  to  ask  myself  afresh, 
on  the  return,  largely  within  sight  of  the  sea,  as  our  earlier  course 
had  kept  to  the  ineffably  romantic  inland  valleys,  the  great  deco 
rated  blue  vistas  in  which  the  breasts  of  the  mountains  shine 
vaguely  with  strange  high-lying  city  and  castle  and  church  and 
convent,  even  as  shoulders  of  no  diviner  line  might  be  hung  about 
with  dim  old  jewels.  It  was  odd,  at  the  end  of  time,  long  after 
those  initiations,  of  comparative  youth,  that  had  then  struck  one 
as  extending  the  very  field  itself  of  felt  charm,  as  exhausting  the 
possibilities  of  fond  surrender,  it  was  odd  to  have  positively  a 
new  basis  of  enjoyment,  a  new  gate  of  triumphant  passage,  thrust 
into  one's  consciousness  and  opening  to  one's  use;  just  as  I  con 
fess  I  have  to  brace  myself  a  little  to  call  by  such  fine  names  our 
latest,  our  ugliest  and  most  monstrous  aid  to  motion.  It  is  true 

[499  1 


ITALIAN   HOURS 

of  the  monster,  as  we  have  known  him  up  to  now,  that  one  can 
neither  quite  praise  him  nor  quite  blame  him  without  a  blush 
—  he  reflects  so  the  nature  of  the  company  he 's  condemned  to 
keep.  His  splendid  easy  power  addressed  to  noble  aims  makes 
him  assuredly  on  occasion  a  purely  beneficent  creature.  I  pa 
renthesise  at  any  rate  that  I  know  him  in  no  other  light  —  count 
ing  out  of  course  the  acquaintance  that  consists  of  a  dismayed 
arrest  in  the  road,  with  back  flattened  against  wall  or  hedge,  for 
the  dusty,  smoky,  stenchy  shock  of  his  passage.  To  no  end  is 
his  easy  power  more  blest  than  to  that  of  ministering  to  the  rami 
fications,  as  it  were,  of  curiosity,  or  to  that,  in  other  words,  of 
achieving  for  us,  among  the  kingdoms  of  the  earth,  the  grander 
and  more  genial,  the  comprehensive  and  complete  introduction. 
Much  as  was  ever  to  be  said  for  our  old  forms  of  pilgrimage  — 
and  I  am  convinced  that  they  are  far  from  wholly  superseded  — 
they  left,  they  had  to  leave,  dreadful  gaps  in  our  yearning,  dread 
ful  lapses  in  our  knowledge,  dreadful  failures  in  our  energy ;  there 
were  always  things  off  and  beyond,  goals  of  delight  and  dreams 
of  desire,  that  dropped  as  a  matter  of  course  into  the  unattain 
able,  and  over  to  which  our  wonder-working  agent  now  flings  the 
firm  straight  bridge.  Curiosity  has  lost,  under  this  amazing  ex 
tension,  its  salutary  renouncements  perhaps;  contemplation  has 
become  one  with  action  and  satisfaction  one  with  desire  —  speak 
ing  always  in  the  spirit  of  the  inordinate  lover  of  an  enlightened 
use  of  our  eyes.  That  may  represent,  for  all  I  know,  an  insolence 
of  advantage  on  which  there  will  be  eventual  heavy  charges,  as 
yet  obscure  and  incalculable,  to  pay,  and  I  glance  at  the  possi- 

[  5°°  ] 


THE   SAINT'S   AFTERNOON 

bility  only  to  avoid  all  thought  of  the  lesson  of  the  long  run,  and 
to  insist  that  I  utter  this  dithyramb  but  in  the  immediate  flush 
and  fever  of  the  short.  For  such  a  beat  of  time  as  our  fine  cour 
teous  and  contemplative  advance  upon  Naples,  and  for  such 
another  as  our  retreat  northward  under  the  same  fine  law  of 
observation  and  homage,  the  bribed  consciousness  could  only 
decline  to  question  its  security.  The  sword  of  Damocles  sus 
pended  over  that  presumption,  the  skeleton  at  the  banquet  of 
extravagant  ease,  would  have  been  that  even  at  our  actual  inor 
dinate  rate  —  leaving  quite  apart  "improvements"  to  come  — 
such  savings  of  trouble  begin  to  use  up  the  world ;  some  hard  grain 
of  difficulty  being  always  a  necessary  part  of  the  composition  of 
pleasure.  The  hard  grain  in  our  old  comparatively  pedestrian 
mixture,  before  this  business  of  our  learning  not  so  much  even 
to  fly  (which  might  indeed  involve  trouble)  as  to  be  mechanically 
and  prodigiously  flown,  quite  another  matter,  was  the  element 
of  uncertainty,  effort  and  patience;  the  handful  of  silver  nails 
which,  I  admit,  drove  many  an  impression  home.  The  seated 
motorist  misses  the  silver  nails,  I  fully  acknowledge,  save  in  so 
far  as  his  aesthetic  (let  alone  his  moral)  conscience  may  supply 
him  with  some  artful  subjective  substitute;  in  which  case  the 
thing  becomes  a  precious  secret  of  his  own. 

However,  I  wander  wild  —  by  which  I  mean  I  look  too  far 
ahead ;  my  intention  having  been  only  to  let  my  sense  of  the  mer 
ciless  June  beauty  of  Naples  Bay  at  the  sunset  hour  and  on  the 
island  terrace  associate  itself  with  the  whole  inexpressible  taste 
of  our  two  motor-days',  feast  of  scenery.  That  queer  question 

[501 1 


ITALIAN  HOURS 

of  the  exquisite  grand  manner  as  the  most  emphasised  all  of 
things  —  of  what  it  may,  seated  so  predominant  in  nature,  in 
sidiously,  through  the  centuries,  let  generations  and  populations 
"in  for,"  had  n't  in  the  least  waited  for  the  special  emphasis  I 
speak  of  to  hang  about  me.  I  must  have  found  myself  more  or 
less  consciously  entertaining  it  by  the  way  —  since  how  could  n't 
it  be  of  the  very  essence  of  the  truth,  constantly  and  intensely 
before  us,  that  Italy  is  really  so  much  the  most  beautiful  country 
in  the  world,  taking  all  things  together,  that  others  must  stand 
off  and  be  hushed  while  she  speaks  ?  Seen  thus  in  great  com 
prehensive  iridescent  stretches,  it  is  the  incomparable  wrought 
fusion,  fusion  of  human  history  and  mortal  passion  with  the  ele 
ments  of  earth  and  air,  of  colour,  composition  and  form,  that  con 
stitutes  her  appeal  and  gives  it  the  supreme  heroic  grace.  The 
chariot  of  fire  favours  fusion  rather  than  promotes  analysis,  and 
leaves  much  of  that  first  June  picture  for  me,  doubtless,  a  great 
accepted  blur  of  violet  and  silver.  The  various  hours  and  suc 
cessive  aspects,  the  different  strong  passages  of  our  reverse  pro 
cess,  on  the  other  hand,  still  figure  for  me  even  as  some  series 
of  sublime  landscape-frescoes  —  if  the  great  Claude,  say,  had 
ever  used  that  medium  —  in  the  immense  gallery  of  a  palace;  the 
homeward  run  by  Capua,  Terracina,  Gaeta  and  its  storied  head 
land  fortress,  across  the  deep,  strong,  indescribable  Pontine 
Marshes,  white-cattled,  strangely  pastoral,  sleeping  in  the  after 
noon  glow,  yet  stirred  by  the  near  sea-breath.  Thick  somehow 
to  the  imagination  as  some  full-bodied  sweetness  of  syrup  is  thick 
to  the  palate  the  atmosphere  of  that  region  —  thick  with  the 

[502  ] 


AM 


TKKKACINA. 


THE  SAINT'S   AFTERNOON 

sense  of  history  and  the  very  taste  of  time ;  as  if  the  haunt  and 
home  (which  indeed  it  is)  of  some  great  fair  bovine  aristocracy 
attended  and  guarded  by  halberdiers  in  the  form  of  the  mounted 
and  long-lanced  herdsmen,  admirably  congruous  with  the  whole 
picture  at  every  point,  and  never  more  so  than  in  their  manner 
of  gaily  taking  up,  as  with  bell-voices  of  golden  bronze,  the  offered 
wayside  greeting. 

There  had  been  this  morning  among  the  impressions  of  our 
first  hour  an  unforgettable  specimen  of  that  general  type  —  the 
image  of  one  of  those  human  figures  on  which  our  perception 
of  the  romantic  so  often  pounces  in  Italy  as  on  the  genius  of  the 
scene  personified;  with  this  advantage,  that  as  the  scene  there 
has,  at  its  best,  an  unsurpassable  distinction,  so  the  physiognomic 
representative,  standing  for  it  all,  and  with  an  animation,  a  com 
plexion,  an  expression,  a  fineness  and  fulness  of  humanity  that 
appear  to  have  gathered  it  in  and  to  sum  it  up,  becomes  beautiful 
by  the  same  simple  process,  very  much,  that  makes  the  heir  to 
a  great  capitalist  rich.  Our  early  start,  our  roundabout  descent 
from  Posilippo  by  shining  Baiae  for  avoidance  of  the  city,  had 
been  an  hour  of  enchantment  beyond  any  notation  I  can  here 
recover;  all  lustre  and  azure,  yet  all  composition  and  classicism, 
the  prospect  developed  and  spread,  till  after  extraordinary  upper 
reaches  of  radiance  and  horizons  of  pearl  we  came  at  the  turn 
of  a  descent  upon  a  stalwart  young  gamekeeper,  or  perhaps  sub 
stantial  young  farmer,  who,  well-appointed  and  blooming,  had 
unslung  his  gun  and,  resting  on  it  beside  a  hedge,  just  lived  for 
us,  in  the  rare  felicity  of^his  whole  look,  during  that  moment  and 

[503  ] 


ITALIAN   HOURS 

while,  in  recognition,  or  almost,  as  we  felt,  in  homage,  we  in 
stinctively  checked  our  speed.  He  pointed,  as  it  were,  the  lesson, 
giving  the  supreme  right  accent  or  final  exquisite  turn  to  the 
immense  magnificent  phrase;  which  from  those  moments  on, 
and  on  and  on,  resembled  doubtless  nothing  so  much  as  a  page 
written,  by  a  consummate  verbal  economist  and  master  of  style, 
in  the  noblest  of  all  tongues.  Our  splendid  human  plant  by  the 
wayside  had  flowered  thus  into  style  —  and  there  was  n't  to  be, 
all  day,  a  lapse  of  eloquence,  a  wasted  word  or  a  cadence  missed. 
These  things  are  personal  memories,  however,  with  the  logic 
of  certain  insistences  of  that  sort  often  difficult  to  seize.  Why 
should  I  have  kept  so  sacredly  uneffaced,  for  instance,  our  small 
afternoon  wait  at  tea-time  or,  as  we  made  it,  coffee-time,  in  the 
little  brown  piazzetta  of  Velletri,  just  short  of  the  final  push  on 
through  the  flushed  Castelli  Romani  and  the  drop  and  home 
stretch  across  the  darkening  Campagna  ?  We  had  been  dropped 
into  the  very  lap  of  the  ancient  civic  family,  after  the  inveter 
ate  fashion  of  one's  sense  of  such  stations  in  small  Italian  towns. 
There  was  a  narrow  raised  terrace,  with  steps,  in  front  of  the 
best  of  the  two  or  three  local  cafes,  and  in  the  soft  enclosed,  the 
warm  waning  light  of  June  various  benign  contemplative  worthies 
sat  at  disburdened  tables  and,  while  they  smoked  long  black 
weeds,  enjoyed  us  under  those  probable  workings  of  subtlety 
with  which  we  invest  so  many  quite  unimaginably  blank  (I  dare 
say)  Italian  simplicities.  The  charm  was,  as  always  in  Italy,  in 
the  tone  and  the  air  and  the  happy  hazard  of  things,  which  made 
any  positive  pretension  or  claimed  importance  a  comparatively 

[  5°4  ] 


THE   SAINT'S   AFTERNOON 

trifling  question.  We  slid,  in  the  steep  little  place,  more  or  less 
down  hill;  we  wished,  stomachically,  we  had  rather  addressed 
ourselves  to  a  tea-basket;  we  suffered  importunity  from  unchid- 
den  infants  who  swarmed  about  our  chairs  and  romped  about  our 
feet;  we  stayed  no  long  time,  and  "went  to  see"  nothing;  yet  we 
communicated  to  intensity,  we  lay  at  our  ease  in  the  bosom  of 
the  past,  we  practised  intimacy,  in  short,  an  intimacy  so  much 
greater  than  the  mere  accidental  and  ostensible:  the  difficulty 
for  the  right  and  grateful  expression  of  which  makes  the  old,  the 
familiar  tax  on  the  luxury  of  loving  Italy. 

1900-1909. 


Stic  l&toerstoe 


CAMBRIDGE  •  MASSACHUSETTS 
U  •    S  •  A 


FORM  NO.  DD6A 


